


It's Not a Side Effect of the Cocaine

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: A little angst, Alternate Universe - Hollywood, Bandom Big Bang 2018, Drug Addiction, Falling In Love, Film/TV industry, Los Angeles, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Soul Punk Era Patrick Stump, a little fluff, a lot of smut, party scene, the music industry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 20:11:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 54,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16772062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: They don’t meet on a front porch in the Midwest. There’s no argyle sweaters or knee socks worn with shorts. There’s no Fall Out Boy. Instead, they meet in a nightclub bathroom somewhere in West Hollywood; a successful solo artist and a not-so-successful actor. Fame breeds infamy.A tale of Hollywood excess, growing up even when you’re, technically, already a grown-up and learning things the hard way.





	1. It's not that I'm not interested, it's that I don't think you should be

**Author's Note:**

> My friends. Let me kick things off by saying that this began almost nine months ago, my Google Doc reliably informs me that I started writing this on March 3rd. It was _supposed_ to be a relatively light-hearted, reasonably short little fake-dating fic about an arrogant pop star and an actor in need of a career boost. 
> 
> But then they developed personalities and _this_ glorious mess happened. I have to say thank you to [semi_sweet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/semi_sweet/pseuds/semi_sweet) for taking the time to beta read this from beginning to end, the help was invaluable. And a big thank you to [Das_verlorene_Kind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Das_verlorene_Kind/pseuds/Das_verlorene_Kind) and [the_chaotic_panda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_chaotic_panda/pseuds/the_chaotic_panda) for letting me bounce ideas off them.
> 
> And of course, thank you to [Flames_and_Jade](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flames_and_Jade/pseuds/Flames_and_Jade) for creating the art to go along with this fic. You can find it [here](https://sn1tchesandtalkers.tumblr.com/post/180590519060/complement-art-for-the-amazing-sn1tchesandtalkers) if you'd like to take a look!
> 
> If you read my last fic, you'll know each of my Patricks receives a little moniker. My friends on Tumblr may have noticed the occasional use of a trick suffix in my tags on certain Soul Punk era gifs and pictures. I would like to take a moment to introduce you to...
> 
> Coketrick.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> [](https://www.flickr.com/photos/168268289@N03/32190476378/in/dateposted-public/)  
> 

_His blood is burning._

_Twisting heat that arcs through his veins like comet trails, steam and smoke and too much burnt-sugar brightness under the taut pull of sweat-slicked skin. He drags his hands through the club-wet, fucked-out mess of his hair and breathes in the smell of bodies, booze and bad decisions. He’s shining with eyes-closed euphoria as his hips roll to the pound and beat of throbbing house music chasing his pulse to swirl in orbit with the flash of the lights above him. His retinas are painted by the flicker-glow of them — even behind his eyelids — Picasso canvases of purple, green, blue and white as someone jams up close to him on the crush of the dance floor._

_He’s not used to sharing a stage but he can work with it for now._

_Hip to hip, cock to cock, he can feel it through the zipper of his jeans, nerve-bright and humming sensation as he flutters his eyes open to take him in — whoever he is. Tan, lithe, tattooed and well-muscled; he has a type and he’s not ashamed to admit it. He dabs his tongue to his lower lip, snagging it sharp between his teeth as he grins all the filthy intent dancing dark on his peripheral vision at a shirtless stranger in a faceless club. He can have the guy on his knees in a heartbeat — he knows he can — the damp press of his spine to a cold bathroom stall as his fingers tangle in dark hair._

_The champagne and cocaine in his system wage war for which is going to shatter his neurons first, for which will lift him highest, fastest, shove him into freefall over the ledge, heart pounding with the thrill of not knowing where he might land. His pulse is stuttering aftershocks everywhere in his body, ringing in his ears, tingling down to his fingertips, ever-extending ripples on a pebble-skimmed lake._

_He hooks his fingers into the dude’s belt, presses closer so their thighs can tangle and he’s soaring, ozone high with a head full of stardust. The beat kicks in through the speakers and the crowd roars to life, syncopating in harmony. He’s never seen so many beautiful people, never felt the warm rush of something this sweetly close to love for everyone around him quite so keenly. He grinds a little closer as the tattooed guy’s hands press to his waist, searing heat on layered heat through damp cotton._

_He doesn’t need to slow down. That, quite frankly, is bullshit spun by an agent who doesn’t seem to appreciate that **he’s** the one who’s paid for that corner office in album pre-sales alone. He’s a superstar, a legend, practically a **god** with congregations measured out in hallowed halls of stadiums around the globe, choirs humming hallelujah with the words **he** gives them._

_There are lips against his throat, softly inviting, biting kisses to skin dewed with salt-bright sweat. If this guy works out his thing for having his Adam’s apple sucked, he’s almost definitely going to blow in his pants. He locks his arms around a gold-glazed neck, tips back his head and grins up at the lights above them._

_He’s on top of the goddamn world._

*

This is a love story.

It’s as close to a love story as anything gets in this, the City of Angels, Los Angeles, Southland. A sprawling haze of concrete and palm trees, shifting in salt-stifled breezes that drop below eighty degrees so rarely it’s basically a state-wide state of emergency when they do. Take a walk down Rodeo Drive and watch the way the high-fliers dip in and out of designer stores and designer cars. Watch closely and see how they get their designer drugs from discreet cars and kids with sunglasses that hide their identities more effectively than counterfeit license plates.

Good love stories need a romantic hero and Pete, he’s as good an option as any, lounging bored against the wall in a high-end, high-price, high-client club out in West Hollywood.

Glitter and makeup is slicked away by sweat as all the pretty people grind together. They fake like they don’t need the carefully sourced pharmaceuticals. Everything they need to keep those smiles city-wide and those egos pulsing star-high. Pete could trace his way with snow white powder along the whole walk of fame and still not create a line long enough to match what’s being snorted through rolled up fifties in the bathroom of the club.

All of those expensive designer septums taking a hell of a hit.

It’s not that Pete doesn’t like fun things. He likes them as much as the next guy, he has a perfectly adequate tolerance for Things That are Fun. But the issue — the real crux of Pete’s problem — is that standing against the wall of a nightclub somewhere in Hollywood with an overpriced beer (though the water is even more expensive, go figure) isn’t his idea of _fun._ It’s actually more like his idea of how to induce sweaty palms and soaring levels of crippling social anxiety.

There’s a pulse of electricity in his spine as he notices someone out on the dancefloor. A shiver of the could-have-been as he takes in peroxide blond, flushed cheeks, blood-bitten lips and eyes that don’t look like they’re in the same room as the rest of him. Some out-of-his-mind little starlet bumping and grinding out the high on the dancefloor. Sometimes, Pete is handed painful reminders of how distinctly _not_ Hollywood he is.

“Dude!” Joe — best friend, confidante, poor handler of alcohol — slurs into his ear, malt on his breath and thickening his tongue as something impossibly cold tips into the small of Pete’s back. Joe’s beer all over his shirt. Fantastic. “You having a good time?”

Pete is still staring at the guy on the dancefloor. Joe nudges him again and sends another waterfall of chilled pale ale down the back of his jeans. He’s growing less amused by the second.

“Yeah,” Pete lies around an enthusiastic nod, his own beer bottle inclined towards the achingly fashionable DJ who looks, at a conservative estimate, roughly twelve years old. “They’re really good! Really—” he struggles for a moment to find the right word — Cool? Is it cool to say _cool_ anymore? — before stuttering, “really, uh — dope?”

“You should be networking,” Joe looks maybe three beers past wasted; eyes shot red, lips shining damp and smiling. “Gabe says — he says there’s—” Joe hiccups, shakes his head, tries again, “—networkers. You should — should hit them up. You know?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Pete nods. Joe’s trying his best, he knows that, but he’s not in the mood for a lesson in how to get noticed. “Just going to the bathroom, yeah?”

The fact is, promoters, networkers and the other glamorous movers and shakers don’t want to talk to him. He’s done, wasting out his washed-up career in soap operas and wondering if the next big bill is going to drive him to contact those porn directors who hand him their cards these days. Dispirited, he makes his way to the men’s room.

In the haven of white tiles, white lights and gleaming white marble, he considers himself in the mirror. Still sufficiently youthful, he decides, _definitely_ still available for roles aged twenty to thirty-five, although he did the right thing getting rid of the flat ironed bangs a year or two ago. His agent said it would draw in work, open his resume to things that went beyond emo college kid.

It’s been six months since he last heard from her. He should hit her up sometime and have her confirm that he’s officially off the books.

The door behind him crashes inward and Pete jolts, spasming pulse, wide eyes, open mouth. The mirrors tell him this looks hilarious as he pivots with arms open, barely in time to catch whoever the fuck it is in the split second before they crash, brow first, into the edge of the sink. The newcomer blinks up at Pete and grants him approximately three ticks of the second hand of his watch to take in bloodshot eyes and skin painted clammy with sweat, the briefest moment to open his mouth and say, “Holy shit, are you o—”

Whoever he is, he opens his own pretty, lush-lipped mouth and paints the tiles, the sink, the bottom of the mirror, Pete’s shoes and the cuffs of his jeans with lurid, sour-smelling vomit.

“—kay?” Pete finishes softly, framed with a sigh and the pinch of his fingers to the sudden, throbbing pain behind the bridge of his nose. Every time. Every fucking time. The guy giggles and slurs something that could be an apology but probably isn’t. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? My _shoes_ , man.”

Recrimination is entirely pointless when the dude passes out cold. Pete shuffles him back to the wall, slides him down it and considers his options. The most sensible route available to him by far is leaving him — in the recovery position, obviously — on the bathroom floor for someone else to deal with. But Pete is neither sensible nor callous enough to abandon someone that he’s honestly starting to worry might be dead.

(He checks his pulse. He’s fine.)

So, if Pete is not that man and this is not that night, he resigns himself to his fate. He’s a pretty little thing; pale as cream with high cheekbones, thick, gold lashes and expensively kept, artfully swept platinum blond hair. Hunkered down on his heels but safely out of the blast zone, Pete pats his cheek, finds it smooth and soft under his fingertips. He stirs, swatting irritably at Pete’s hand as he huffs out a curse in a voice that echoes with Chicago. As a native Chicagoan, Pete tries to tell himself that hometown camaraderie makes him a little less resentful about the shoes. It doesn’t work.

“Hey, man,” he tries, the dude hums a little, chin dropped down to his chest. “Can you hear me? Are you alright? Like, are you here with someone or can I — I dunno, call someone for you?”

“Charlie.” The name slurs from his lips on a hiccup.

Pete has no idea if that’s his name, the name of a friend or a demand for more of what he’s clearly spent the better — or worse — part of the evening shoving up his nose.

“Your name is Charlie?” Pete sits back on his heels a little, head cocked, and looks Charlie over. He’s the out of his mind dude from the dancefloor, bleach blond hair slicking to his forehead, white shirt washed sheer with sweat. Pete almost recognizes him, some nagging recollection stirring in the dark recesses that still compel him to thumb through National Enquirer when he’s at the dentist’s office. He doesn’t look like a Charlie.

“Charlie,” Charlie repeats, a little more confidently this time, eyes still closed. “Charlie.”

He belches, wet and sour-smelling, chased by a giggle as he mumbles something senseless to himself. Pete sighs once more and stoops, hauling his arm around his shoulder and heaving him upright. Charlie slips a little, wet lips grazing against Pete’s neck as he hums into his throat; some senseless, half-hazed babble of silly syllables. Pete grimaces. Charlie nuzzles against him with a happy little sigh.

“Smell nice,” he mumbles, breath drenched in champagne.

“And _you_ smell like shit,” Pete informs him helpfully. He’s not kidding, the booze kicking off Charlie is enough to haze the air around him, soured with bile and dance-drench sweat. “Let’s go.”

“Right.” Charlie doesn’t move, ass pushed to brace against the wall, neck slack and cheek to Pete’s shoulder. Pete didn’t intend to spend his night babysitting. This is almost exactly why he tells everyone that he hates clubs.

“Okay, Charlie? Hey, stay with me man, you listening?” Pete enunciates each word with exaggerated care as he pushes his hip into Charlie’s. He’s a deadweight, which is unfortunate. Luckily, he’s tiny, bird-like; Pete’s pretty sure he could bench press him with one hand. “Let’s get you some air, shall we?”

Charlie slips his arm around Pete’s waist and his hand into the back of Pete’s jeans, fingers sliding slippery against the crack of Pete’s ass.

It’s not as helpful as Charlie possibly imagines it is.

Pete manages to organize them roughly two steps back into the main body of the club when the world around him seems to shift, explode and go completely, unequivocally batshit fucking insane.

Dark suits, dark glasses, dark earpieces and two enormous guys with shaved heads wrestle Charlie out of his grasp. Pete is tackled, rammed to the wall in the least fun way imaginable, as they pat him down, check him over and turn to suit number three with a nod, Charlie propped up between them.

“Charlie!” Charlie exclaims, rallying a little as Pete nurses his elbow — sore from where it met the wall in amongst all of the shoving — and glares at them all resentfully. “Where you been?”

Pete blinks, confused.

“Is he with you?” Charlie — actual Charlie, Pete realizes — asks, inclining his head back towards Pete as he steadies whoever the fuck Pete hauled out of the bathroom with a practiced hand fisted tight into the shirt at the small of his back. “Patrick? I said, is he with you?”

“No, I’m not,” Pete shakes his head vehemently, “I just…”

He trails off. No one is listening to him.

The guy — Patrick, apparently — slurs a string of nonsense around booze-deadened lips, fingers stroking hot and clammy against Pete’s cheek. Patrick nods, slow and dazed and slack-mouthed-smiling and, before Pete can object, he’s hustled along next to Patrick, caught in a solid wall of muscle and well-tailored Hugo Boss formal wear.

A more assertive man might object. Pete, however, is not an assertive man. Instead, he trips along politely, rushed off his feet as they’re bundled out of the club, through the side entrance and into a waiting car. Pete doesn’t catch the brand name in the blinding pop of flashbulbs and calls of _‘Patrick! Over here!’_ but whatever it is, it’s sleek, dark and upholstered in butter-soft Italian leather and, almost certainly, worth more than the contents of Pete’s house.

Pete needs to clear up this tiny little misunderstanding.

“Listen,” he manages to squeak.

They don’t listen.

The door closes behind him with an expensive thud. Patrick immediately starts to mouth at Pete’s throat, humming something slurred about tattoos. Pete doesn’t _exactly_ shove him away because the dude sitting opposite him — Charlie — looks like he could crush his skull in one hand, but he _does_ try to subtly edge towards the door.

Someone once told Pete that assertiveness would blossom with maturity. They probably told him this while he was passed out drunk on his bathroom floor and they probably meant he’d learn to _just say no._ No one told him he’d still be lurching along from one disaster to another in his thirties. Pete feels many things in this particular moment — confusion, irritation, rabbit-eyed _fear_ — but one thing he does _not_ feel is _assertive._

He has a disturbing sense of déjà vu, a nagging familiarity in bloodshot blues and wet, red lips. Patrick. Patrick Stump. Pete’s almost certain he has this guy’s first two albums on his iPod. He doesn’t know if he’s starstruck or incredibly uncomfortable as Patrick tries to kiss him, misses, and smears his lips against the headrest instead. This is probably what they mean when they talk about never meeting your idols.

Patrick giggles. Charlie doesn’t react. Pete suspects he sees this a lot.

“Don’t worry,” Patrick slurs, all flushed with drunken sincerity as he brushes a hand over Pete’s belt buckle. Pete would throw himself from the car but they’re on the freeway now and travelling at close to sixty. “I almost never puke once I’m actually getting fucked.”

Pete tries the door handle.

It’s locked.

*

Patrick wakes slowly, eyes closed and mouth open.

He’s been informed, reliably and by people way smarter than him, that the hangover is a payoff for the high but right now he doesn’t need sanctimony. All he really needs is for the thrash metal band that seems to have taken up residence in his frontal lobe to knock off the Slayer impersonation for one goddamn _minute._

Honestly, he doesn’t remember the last time he woke up feeling well-rested. His phone informs him with cheery illumination that he’s barely scraped into the a.m. but he feels as though he’s hardly blinked as he cranes his neck away from the retina-scorching sunlight streaming through the floor to ceiling glass that makes up one of his bedroom walls.

(His real estate agent told him that it’s a desirable design feature; a view straight out to the Hollywood sign, a testament to a century of excess and silver screen kings and queens. His real estate agent can go fuck himself.)

Patrick’s headache intensifies from thrash metal to out of time marching band. Water would be good but his glass, the eternal pessimist, has long since slipped from half full to totally empty. He’s not sure he has the mental capacity or the motor control to make it all the way downstairs without hurting himself. _Further_. Without hurting himself _further_. Would it really be so wrong to call someone and have them fetch him a couple dozen gallons of Evian and a few handfuls of Tylenol?

He wiggles his toes against the sheets and tries to ascertain if there’s any part of his body that doesn’t currently ache all the way down through tissue and nerve to throb into his bone marrow. Sadly, he’s forced to draw the conclusion that there is not and that this is unlikely to rectify itself. He needs to grit his teeth, take his destiny into his own hands and venture downstairs for hydration and medication.

Getting upright is always the hardest part, the seasick lurch of vertigo that pitches and rolls the room around him as bile climbs into the back of his throat. He closes his eyes, breathes deeply and edges his legs over the side of the bed. So far, so good. He digs his toes into the rug at his bedside and, with a groan a lesser man might describe as Herculean, pushes his way to his feet.

He immediately remembers that _remaining_ upright is far harder than achieving verticality, a reminder dealt as he slips, lurches and crashes headlong into the wall.

“Fuck,” he yelps. He wishes he hadn’t when the marching band introduces a couple more drums and an out-of-tune trombone.

His breath is sticky and sour, beading condensation on the paintwork as he closes his eyes and, momentarily at least, prays for the sweet release of death. He needs a plan. Not a grand one, a few basic bullet points will do. He thinks, and what he comes up with is this:

  1. Get downstairs;
  2. rehydrate;
  3. medicate.



He’ll worry about pants later.

He takes the stairs with careful caution, both feet on each tread as he holds the handrail in a white-knuckled death grip and mentally compiles a list on the pros and cons of throwing up. He’s at point four of the cons – _just had the hallway rug cleaned after last time_ – when he makes it into the kitchen. The sunlight is, impossibly, even brighter down here, bouncing against the white marble countertops to prism pounding pain behind his eyes. He clamps them shut tight enough to make his eyelids ache and shuffles his way by feel alone to the cabinet, grabs a glass – highball, unless he’s very much mistaken – then leans for a moment against the smooth, cold steel of his refrigerator door.

Somewhere over the groan of the water dispenser as it brims his glass with the cool promise of liquid relief, he hears it. The faintest sound of someone politely clearing their throat. Patrick lives alone. He grips his glass a little tighter and wonders if the Castle Doctrine applies to cocktail glassware.

Realistically, he decides, eyes still closed and forehead still pressed to the refrigerator, _realistically_ , an armed kidnapper _probably_ wouldn’t have executed such a well-practiced _don’t mind me_. He’s still, essentially, hugging the refrigerator, arms spread and cheeks-chest-thighs pressed to the cool relief of the door. He supposes it isn’t very dignified. He cracks an eye open experimentally.

There’s a man at his breakfast island.

Marooned there, wide-eyed, like he’s Lemuel Gulliver and Patrick is the sum total of the residency of Lilliput. This seems unfairly judgmental coming from a man sporting three in the morning hair and a Metallica muscle tank, sitting on a stranger’s stool in a kitchen where he doesn’t belong. Patrick is as close to certain as he’s going to get whilst it’s _this_ early and he’s _this_ sober that the man isn’t someone sent from the label. In honesty, Patrick is growing increasingly concerned that he’s still somewhat high and hallucinating.

“You’re in my kitchen,” Patrick observes.

“I am,” the man on the stool counters, fingertips tracing around the dark screen of an iPhone. Patrick _knows_ he is, he’d like to know _why._ “Uh… Yeah.”

Patrick is beginning to wonder if this guy has possibly been cut off from the herd on one of those Homes of the Stars tours that occasionally swing by his house. He takes a sip of his water and rummages in the cabinet for Tylenol, swallowing down the recommended dose, then adding an extra pill for good luck. There’s a sweat-damp shadow of his body left in smudged repose against the refrigerator door.

When he turns around, the guy is still there, still blinking at him, so odds are Patrick isn’t tripping balls. This is a Good Thing because those mornings are the worst; the ones spent under his sheets with his knees drawn up and his eyes closed whilst demons chase nightmares around the shadows in his room. On the other hand, it’s a Bad Thing because now Patrick has to actually deal with him.

“Who are you?” Patrick tries, slowly and carefully, each word enunciated with the exaggerated curve of lips and tongue. “And why are you in my kitchen?”

“Dude,” the guy replies, equally slowly and with his eyes fixed in studied concentration on the acres of folding glass that lead out to the pool. “I’m Pete. You know, from last night?”

Last night.

Patrick takes another long sip of water as he considers Pete over the rim of his glass. In his head, the gesture is suave and well-executed, but in reality, he lost one contact lens sometime between leaving the house last night and waking up, and the other feels like sandpaper. He squints as regally as he can.

Pete-from-last-night does look vaguely familiar in an insignificant sort of way and Patrick is beginning to wonder if perhaps he’d recognize him better with his clothes off. Usually, his one night stands linger in his bed, as hungover and unwilling to greet the day as he is but it’s not unheard of for someone to take themselves on a private tour of his place. It’s not that he has that soresticky _good_ feeling that usually lingers after a good fucking but, who knows? Maybe he topped. Maybe he passed out whilst getting his dick sucked.

The latter is honestly more likely than the former.

A nagging voice — Jiminy Cricket but more insistently asshole — is reminding Patrick that it’s almost impossible to find out the answer unless he opens his mouth and asks. A slightly politer but much less vociferous voice reminds him that he probably shouldn’t phrase it indelicately.

“Did we fuck last night?” he asks. It seems likely. Pete is Jude Law in the nineties levels of pretty; sharp jaw, soulful eyes and biceps that suggest he could fuck Patrick against the wall without breaking a sweat. Pete’s eyebrows rise. He still doesn’t look at Patrick.

“I…” Pete begins, trails off, starts again. “No. We did not.”

Patrick is vaguely offended that Pete looks vaguely offended.

“Okay,” Patrick places down his glass and folds his arms, “I’ll go back to the beginning. Why are you in my kitchen?” Pete chews his lip, eyes down, “Or do I have to call security?”

This is an empty threat as “security” will be in his own apartment, many miles away in Altadena. But it’s always good to maintain a visage of fortress-like protection at all times.

“Your security guard,” Pete is an explosion of words that all seem to want to vibrate from him in one stream of shuddering sound, spilling messy and hot over his lips as he drums the counter with twitching, edgy fingertips, “Charlie? I think he thought I was, well, _with_ you but, like, no one listened when I told them I found you in the bathroom. Then when we got back here, he sort of — you know — _threw_ me through the front door with you and, honestly, I would’ve left right away, but...”

Pete gives up and goes back to delicately tracing patterns onto the countertop with the tip of his finger. Patrick does not want to imagine a stranger, _this_ stranger, putting him to bed. Patrick does not want to imagine what might have happened _before_ this stranger managed to persuade him to go to bed. All of this, every part of it, is infinitely more fun when the strangers Patrick brings home are in the same condition he is.

“But?” Patrick prompts. The marching band has invited some mariachi buddies along, it would be festive if it didn’t make his battered brain throb in beat with his pulse.

“But,” Pete gusts on a deep breath, “I didn’t know how to work your security gates.”

If Patrick were more drunk — or _less_ hungover — he’d laugh. Instead, he seems to be constructed of rubbed raw nerve endings and prickling anxiety, both chasing misfiring synapses and dead-end neurons around his nervous system, intent on shoving him into a morning-after panic attack. He opens the refrigerator under the ruse of looking for something to eat, even though he knows — even though Pete can _see_ — that there’s nothing more than two bottles of champagne and a festering carton of expired pomegranate seeds. It looks even more ridiculous given the tundra-like proportions of the shelves and Patrick is suddenly overwhelmingly embarrassed.

Patrick has never been particularly good at dealing with negative emotions. This has not been assisted by a decade of fawning praise dealt out by people paid to reassure him of his remarkability. So, he does what he does best and immediately converts this to bitchy irritation.

“So,” he begins, fingernails _scritch-scritch-scritch_ against the scruff of faint stubble on his jaw, “you’re telling me Charlie kidnapped you and you’ve spent the night sleeping on my couch?”

There follows a long pause before Pete mutters with a blush creeping up from his shirt collar like sunrise, “I didn’t sleep on the couch.”

“You found a guest room?” Patrick prompts and tries not to examine how violated that makes him feel. Pete shakes his head. Patrick’s eyebrows furrow as he takes in the bruise-smudge shadows that streak under Pete’s eyes. “Wait. You — you sat in my kitchen? All night?”

Pete doesn’t reply beyond the twist of his thumbs one over the other and Patrick can feel any patience for — and amusement at — the whole situation deserting him entirely. Patrick is tired, sore and apparently didn’t get laid last night, none of which is doing much for his good humor and bonhomie towards pretty-eyed (but ultimately _weird_ ) men that spend the night sitting at bar stools in stranger’s kitchens. Still, at least that explains why he sort of recognizes the guy.

“I’m sorry,” Pete mutters into the silence, face in profile.

Like one of those coin cascade machines at state fairs and bone-bleached boardwalks, a whole _avalanche_ of pennies drop as Patrick _actually_ recognizes him.

“Holy shit!” he exclaims, finger pointed in accusation as he crosses the kitchen. Pete shifts back slightly on his stool, wary and guarded. “You’re — you’re _him_! You’re Chad fucking Brightsteel! That’s fucking _hilarious_!” Pete looks as though he’s three seconds away from testing his fight or flight response and Patrick isn’t sure which way it’s likely to swing. “Okay, alright, fan theory but like, Chad and Ben are totally fucking, right? I mean, it’s not even fucking _subtle_.”

 _Guilty Pleasure_ , as everyone with even a modicum of intelligence is aware, is a fucking terrible show. It continues to get aired purely because bored college students — and equally bored multi-platinum selling solo artists — watch it entirely for comedy value. It’s like Dynasty, but without the highly nuanced acting skills. It’s popular precisely _because_ it sucks, rather than fading into obscurity like it deserves and Patrick has leading man Chad fucking _Brightsteel_ sitting at his kitchen counter. He almost wants to ask for a picture because this has Instagram sensation written all over it.

Pete is glaring at him, the first time he’s looked him in the eye since Patrick peeled himself from the front of the refrigerator, honey-gold gaze flecked with ember-bright fury. Patrick’s sly inner asshole stirs and stretches, claws drawn razor-sharp.

“Say the line,” Patrick prompts, fingernails caught in the snag of what he realizes now is an open wound, twisting and pulling cruelly. Pete has been reduced to a meme ever since that moment, the sharp-focus close up of dramatized horror, mouth open and eyes wide as he gasped _‘Ben, no!’_ Patrick has seen it time and again, the reaction punchline to every fail vine on YouTube. A career reduced to nothing more than vicious parody. Pete’s fists clench against the countertop. “Come on, man! You must get this all the time, say the line!”

“I think,” Pete begins with admirable dignity given he spent the night sat at Patrick’s breakfast island rather than _leaving_ like a normal person, “that you’re probably the resident expert on lines,” _ouch_ , “and would it kill you to put some fucking pants on?”

Patrick merely shrugs; enough men like Pete have seen his dick. He’s sort of _laissez faire_ about the whole casual nudity thing in the privacy of his own kitchen and so far, he’s managed to keep his cock out of the pages of US Weekly and the URLs of Perez Hilton’s website which he considers a win. Pete shifts on the stool and the sour stench of vomit hits Patrick square in the olfactory processing center, sending him reeling back on his heel as he claps a hand to his mouth and frantically recites his earlier list re: vomiting.

“Fuck.” He breathes through his mouth to lessen the impact. This is massively less effective than he hoped it might be. “Did you throw up on yourself?”

“No.” Pete straightens his back and squares his shoulders. There’s something an awful lot like palpable dislike radiating from him that Patrick finds infuriating. People like Pete are supposed to _respect_ people like Patrick. _“You_ did.”

Oh. Well.

That explains it.

“Listen,” Pete snaps, before Patrick can offer to, like, buy the guy some new shoes or something. (Patrick might be an asshole, but he’s not _that_ kind of asshole. Not the kind of asshole that trashes some tragic soap actor’s shoes and then doesn’t replace them, at least.) “Could I borrow your phone so I can call a cab? Mine died last night.”

Patrick can imagine him, playing endless rounds of Angry Birds as the sky washed from Kraken-dark to aqua blue curacao. It’s close to midday so, assuming they got back around two, he’s been sat on that stool for _ten_ hours.

“Sure, whatever,” Patrick rolls his eyes and leans against the counter. “Landline is in the hallway. The gates are motion sensitive. I dunno — fucking _wave_ at them or some shit on your way out. They’ll open. Nice meeting you, _Chad_.”

He thinks he hears Pete mutter something that sounds an awful lot like _‘douchebag’_.

Patrick’s been called worse.

Before he can muse on it any further or lose himself in the view of an ass to die for as Pete slides off the stool and heads for the hall, he’s interrupted. The Imperial March rings from the phone still clutched in Patrick’s hand, the picture of a snarling chihuahua filling the screen. He would smirk at the handset if he had the energy, instead, he heaves a sigh.

It’s his agent.

“Hel—”

“ _Again_ , Patrick?” Already, Andy sounds painfully done with Patrick’s shit and it’s barely lunchtime. Patrick can picture him, sat at his desk with his CrossFit trophies ranged in the case where most managers would keep accolades to their clients. Andy is a doer, not a passive hack willing to ride the coattails of someone else’s success. Patrick would find it inspirational if he didn’t entirely resent him for it. “Didn’t we literally have this talk yesterday?”

“Hmm,” Patrick says, non-committal and petulant. Andy talked, and, if he remembers correctly, Patrick sat in his seat and ignored him.

“ _Hmm_?” Andy repeats, the thin thread of control in his voice straining perilously close to snapping entirely. “Fucking _hmm_? I tell you to rein it in and twelve hours later you’re falling out of Avalon with Chad fucking _Brightsteel_?”

“I did rein it in,” Patrick objects, childish and argumentative. “You told me no more 4am paparazzi shots. I was home by two.”

“Have you seen the pictures?” Andy asks, rather than address Patrick’s facetious objection. Patrick shakes his head, as though Andy can see him. As though Andy needs any encouragement with the winds of self-righteousness filling his sails. No, he hasn’t seen them, but he imagines they look much the same as the ones that came before them— Patrick, glassy-eyed and vacant, falling into the backseat of an expensive European town car. “I’ve got the head of fucking Island blowing up my phone wanting to know why they shouldn’t drop your ass entirely after Soul Punk drops. Do you get that, Patrick? Do you _understand_ what I’m saying?”

“Hmm,” Patrick repeats. Partially because he has nothing to add to the conversation. Mostly because he knows it pisses Andy off. Island can go fuck themselves; Patrick is set to hit number one on the billboards based on pre-sales alone, he’s beyond needing Island. Someone else will snap him up.

“I guess at least this Wentz guy seems, I dunno, _normal_ ,” Andy offers after a pause. “What the hell was he doing with _you_?”

Patrick resents that.

“Actually,” Patrick says, words spewing forth, the scattered crystal burst of a water balloon to a hot sidewalk; gone before he can control them and gather them back, “Pete and I are dating.”

Patrick is presented, suddenly, with a whole acre of disbelieving silence into which he could pour laughter and derision. He could clear it up with a joke and Andy would never speak of it again.

Patrick knows that every second of quiet drags the disbelief into reality. It makes it into something real and palpable. It makes it something that would fill the right-hand bar of the gossip sites with click bait. It’s people talking about him, but not because of the latest pictures of him falling out of a nightclub, ozone-high with compound chemicals.

He could end this before it starts. He stays silent.

“Seriously?” Andy asks, like he thinks it’s anything but.

“Seriously,” Patrick repeats, even as common sense demands to know what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. He glances, wide-eyed and wary, at the doorway to the hall where he can faintly hear Pete calling a cab. He needs Andy off the phone before the damage limitation becomes something that he needs a lawyer to rectify. Is lying about being Pete’s boyfriend defamation of character? He’s not sure he wants to find out. “I _am_ capable of normal human interaction, you know.”

“Oh,” Andy takes a deep breath that speaks of knuckles pressed to eye sockets and nights spent scouring contracts for release clauses. “Well, that’s _great._ It’s — it’s about time you settled down a little. You haven’t dated anyone since… Yeah, I’ll get some opportunities set up for you to be snapped being wholesome together. Brunch or — or surfing or something.”

Wait, surfing? Patrick hedges his bets for ‘ _or something_ ’ instead. Once he’s persuaded his ‘ _boyfriend_ ’ to actually date him, that is. In the hallway, it sounds as though Pete is wrapping up his conversation. On the table, his iPhone sits in silent judgement, by some miracle the same model and color as Patrick’s.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Patrick says, not even stopping to question why he isn’t stopping to question his manager shamelessly using his not-boyfriend to boost his image. “Gotta go. Speak soon.”

Patrick can hear shoes against tile echoing closer as Pete approaches. He kills his phone and smoothly pulls the old switcheroo with the one face-down on the counter. Somehow, he doubts Pete will be amenable to taking his number if he asks like a normal person but this way? Well, Pete won’t have a choice.

“Done?” he asks, a little more warmly than anything he’s said so far this morning. Pete nods and reaches for his phone, frowning down at the blank screen for a moment.

Patrick holds his breath.

Pete slides it into his pocket and grabs his jacket from the back of the stool. Neat and careful and inconspicuous — there will be literally no evidence left behind that he was ever here. The perfect crime.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” Pete mutters, already heading for the door. “Thanks for…”

Pete trails off. _Nothing_ , Patrick assumes.

He doesn’t say it was nice to meet Patrick. Patrick guesses this is because it wasn’t.

Once the door slams closed behind him and Patrick can watch him retreat down the driveway, once he’s seen the gates roll back and Pete disappear through them, _then_ Patrick can rush to his room to fidget through the impatient intermenity of an iPhone regaining charge. Finally, _finally,_ the screen flashes white and then asks for a passcode. Patrick fumbles for his iPad and navigates with clumsy fingers. Wikipedia helpfully informs him that Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz is openly bisexual (which is convenient) and was born in Wilmette (Patrick is from Glenview, a suburb over, he’s sure he can use this to his advantage and files it away for later) on June 5th, 1979.

060579.

The phone unlocks and Patrick navigates straight to Pete’s text messages, settling back on his bed with a happy little sigh.

Pete clearly doesn’t think Patrick is a particularly nice person.

Here’s the thing: Patrick supposes he probably isn’t.

*

Pete realizes he has the wrong phone within ten minutes of landing back through the door of his house, somewhere achingly suburban in the valley. He used to tell people he lived in San Fernando back when he first moved out to the west coast, he knows better now. It’s _the valley_ which doesn’t mean San Gabriel, Santa Clarita or Antelope. You don’t have an 818 area code? You’re not in the valley.

The fact is, he only bought the place because it was close to work when he first got cast in Overcast Kids back in the late 90s. It was _supposed_ to be the start of an investment portfolio. He was _supposed_ to continue snapping up little pockets of real estate as his name grew, as he climbed the dizzying heights of the Hollywood social scene. He was _supposed_ to have traded suburbia for Malibu glamour by now. Instead, he’s in a house half a block down from not one, not two, but _three_ different porn studios and living with a (necessary to pay the mortgage) roommate.

Life has not turned out the way it was _supposed_ to.

None of this is remotely important. What _is_ important is that his phone is slung on the countertop of a ridiculous little man’s kitchen someplace up in the hills. His phone, his link to his agent (yes, the agent that’s actively avoiding him but still, something _might_ come up) and, most importantly, evidence that he cracked level 136 of Angry Birds is in a stranger’s mansion behind a locked gate.

Pete has the wrong phone and no way of recovering the right one.

“Where the hell did you go?” Joe asks him from the couch. He’s watching infomercials. Given that it’s one in the afternoon, this means he went looking for them which means, by the power of Pete’s superior skills of deduction, that Joe is completely blazed. “I fucking looked for you, man.”

“I got mistaken for a pop star’s one-night stand,” Pete lifts one shoulder as he snatches a handful of Doritos from the bag balanced in Joe’s lap. “His security guard fucking _abducted_ me and I spent the night sitting in his kitchen. You ever seen the movie Misery? Like that but more Beverly Hills and no one got their feet smashed in a with a sledgehammer.”

“The security guard’s kitchen?” Joe asks vaguely, somehow managing to look confused and disinterested all at once. Joe is talented like that. “Or the pop star’s? Wait, _which_ pop star? Was it Britney? I bet it was Britney.”

“I said _his_ , dipshit.” This is literally the most exciting thing to happen to Pete in two years, a thought that leaves him less elated and more thoroughly depressed. “Patrick Stump.”

“Holy shit, dude, no way!” Joe stops chewing but doesn’t start swallowing, masticated tortilla chips sticking to his tongue as he continues. “I did a music video for him once. Well, I was in the crowd scene but I got like, a four second close up.”

Pete hums around a mouthful of chips, remote wrestled from Joe’s grease-slippery fingers as he flips away from the infomercials and towards TMZ. Motivated by masochism, he braces himself to be reminded that there are many beautiful people in LA worthy of the pop of flashbulbs and that he — Chad Brightsteel — is not one of them. Which is why he almost chokes on his own tongue as his face fills each of the 50 inches of state-of-the-art, high definition plasma Joe insisted they had to buy for the living room.

He looks terrified, overwhelmed, blinking owlishly into the explosion of flashbulbs as Patrick staggers along beside him. Pete thinks he might have liked him a whole lot better when he was out of his mind and sloppy with chemically induced affection. The prick standing with his cock out in the middle of a kitchen bigger than Pete’s entire _house_ was not a particularly endearing individual.

“And it was another interesting night for Patrick Stump. The Gin and Kerosene sensation was seen leaving Avalon in the early hours with Pete Wentz, best known for playing Evan Darkblood in nineties vampire high school drama Overcast Kids.” That is _unfair._ Pete has been in _other_ things. He’s in something else _right now_ and it wouldn’t exactly hurt if she gave him a little plug. But you play a brooding vampire heartthrob in _one_ shitty serial… Pete is literally never going to live that down. “A source close to the singer says the two started dating recently, so expect more on that to follow.”

The reporter moves on to something new — some rapper donating big money to his old inner-city school — and Pete sits, frozen entirely as Joe blinks at him from the opposite end of the couch. Somehow, Joe manages to radiate surprise, disbelief and also a level of judgement that hits roughly an eight on the Richter Scale. Pete would like, very much, to be excused from this narrative.

Eyebrows raised, Joe says, “Dating?”

“ _Not_ dating,” Pete replies emphatically. Joe looks like he doesn’t believe him at all. Joe looks like he doesn’t believe him because Joe has never met, been barfed on by, and spent the night in the home of Patrick fucking Stump. “Absolutely, definitely _not_ dating, at all. Ever. Under any possible circumstances.”

There follows a long silence, broken only by the crunch of a cool ranch Dorito between Joe’s teeth. Pete is unsure if he’s going to lapse into an anxiety attack or throw up, such is the extent of his wish _not_ to be associated with Patrick Stump. Finally, Joe takes a particularly deep breath and begins to speak, “Well,” Joe says, “this explains a lot. Okay, maybe not a lot, but it definitely explains the phone calls.”

Pete upscales his lowkey, comfortably background panic attack from Defcon 4 to a 2. Maybe pushing into a 1. Look, the important thing is that it’s no longer pleasantly humming along at a 4 and is instead firing flashing red sirens that streak across his vision and turn him dizzy. Panic blind, he simply stares at Joe and slowly — oh, so slowly — reminds his mouth how to frame words, “ _What_ phone calls?” He tosses air quotes around the last two words for good measure.

The fun thing about being a wash up is that agents aren’t interested in representing wash ups. Another interesting fact about wash ups is that casting directors are alarmingly reticent about getting involved with wash ups without agents. This means that a wash up — like Pete — relies on one of two devil-or-the-deep-blue options. One, brazen it out, become actor, agent and publicist and stand proudly on the deck of the sinking ship of a failing career or two, lie shamelessly and have a stoner roommate take on the role.

No prizes will be awarded for guessing which recourse Pete employs.

“I took like, _four_ calls this morning,” Joe shrugs. Pete is going to strangle him. He has methods, exit strategies and places to hide the body already figured out. “Some commercials, another soap opera. Oh, and one from some dude wanting you for a soft porn movie. He said he’d show your dick but, like, in a _classy_ way. Black and white, I guess, that makes _everything_ look classy.”

“A _movie_?” Pete’s voice has slipped from gritted gasp to shriek, scraping raw against his vocal cords as he resists the urge to grab Joe by the collar and shake him. Pete is no longer pretending to be calm. Pete is the pressured burst of backed up water in a knotted hose; buildingbuiding _building_ until he’s sure he’ll explode. So agitated is Pete, that he doesn’t even really hear _soft porn_ before the word _movie_. “And you’re just telling me _now_? Dude, do you remember the conversation we had about prioritizing information when you get high? This is what I was talking—”

Whatever Pete is talking about is lost in the obnoxious ping of a text message reminder set at full volume. The sudden burst of sound makes every part of Pete’s chest hurt, his vision blur and the very roots of his teeth ache. He wonders, distantly, if this is what having a heart attack feels like.

The upshot is that Pete isn’t having the best day. He remains sore with the memory of pouring an inebriated musician into his outlandishly sized bed and propping him into the recovery position. Pete wasn’t being _entirely_ truthful when he said he spent the night in the kitchen. _Actually_ , he spent most of the night sat cross-legged on Patrick’s bedroom floor, watching the rise and fall of his ribs and convincing himself that any second would bring the nightmare of him choking on his own vomit. Honestly, he’s sort of concerned that everyone just _left_ Patrick alone. Unsupervised with him, Pete Wentz, an unknown quantity, a potential rapist, murderer and international dog thief.

He finds that kind of sad.

 _I have your phone_ , the iPhone interloper informs him from his palm. This is not unforeseen evidence, it’s something he’s very aware of, thank you very much. It’s reminiscent of a ransom note and no part of it fails to sound ominous. Stranded with no way to reply, he awaits more information like he’s Liam Neeson and about to employ a very particular set of skills. It arrives moments later: _Passcode is 101811. Call me?_

“I gotta go,” he informs Joe, stumbling for his room. Door slammed behind him like a whole host of dangerous somethings are nipping at his heels, he draws the blinds, unplugs the ethernet cable from his laptop and climbs under his sheets for good measure. He knows this isn’t rational. Nothing that has happened in the past twelve hours is rational.

“Hey.” Patrick picks up on the second ring, sounding far too perky for a guy who, if God is just and merciful, should be nursing the hangover from hell right about now. “So, I probably made a pretty bad impression this morning, right?”

Pete’s first thought, the one he’s nurtured for close to twelve hours now, comes tumbling out, “Fuck _you_ , Patrick goddamn Stump.”

“Come on,” Patrick oozes charm like Pete is oozing hot, panicky sweat, “I’m actually a pretty nice guy if you get to know me.”

“You _barfed_ on my fucking _shoes_. There is no limit to the amount of my ass you can kiss. You could _try_ to empirically record it, but you’d be unsuccessful.”

It occurs to Pete — dimly, distantly, an echo down a hallway — that he’s laying into an international recording artist. The kind of man who could, theoretically, buy and sell Pete each and every day of the week. He decides, delirious, that he no longer has a single fuck to give.

Patrick pauses, breath a crackle of static down the line, before he speaks. “Is that any way to speak to your boyfriend?”

“Oh _God_ , TMZ says we’re dating,” Pete says — he wants it to be laced with derision but instead it comes out as a nervous bleat, “does anyone else think we’re dating? I — why do they _think_ that?”

Patrick’s laugh is sweet; cherry soda at backyard pool parties and stolen kisses under baseball bleachers. It’s painfully difficult to recall all the ways he dislikes him when it takes him straight home to Chicago, a faint twitch in his groin as Patrick lowers his voice a little. “Well, you got into a strange man’s car at two in the morning. That’s a pretty surefire way to get a reputation, or are you saying you’re not that kind of guy?”

Patrick’s charm is disarming, his voice alluring, the image of him called up on Pete’s laptop — a high-end photoshoot for GQ or Men’s Vogue — entirely delicious. Stupid, Pete makes the unilateral decision to let his dick steer the conversation.

“I expect dinner and a movie at a minimum.” Pete is almost certain this is flirting. He’s convinced, steel sharp resolve that doesn’t seem to compute between his brain and his big, dumb mouth, that this is a bad idea. “Your bedside manner could use a little work. And we’re not dating.”

“But TMZ says we _are_ ,” Patrick’s voice is softer, coaxing, “It’d be a shame to disappoint everyone, don’t you think? Listen, I have to get my phone back anyway, let me take you out for brunch. To apologize for the shoes if nothing else.”

Pete is hit with the distracting notion of Patrick’s lips, close to the mouthpiece of _his_ phone. The unfortunate side-effect of this development is that thinking about Patrick’s lips (plush, soft-stained pink, the lower one thick and luscious and perfect for biting) leads to thinking about Patrick’s lips doing things Pete shouldn’t be thinking about. The oxygen saturation in the atmosphere seems to drop and Pete is suffocating in an airlock constructed entirely by his hormones and idiotic penis.

“No photographers,” he warns Patrick, “no stupid publicity stunts, okay? This is just guys being dudes, right?”

“Of course,” Patrick replies with so much heartfelt sincerity it has to be faked. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Trust you?” Pete echoes. This has definitely crossed into flirting. “I don’t even know you.”

“If you knew me,” Patrick laughs, a sound that trails down Pete’s spine like talented fingertips, “then you _definitely_ wouldn’t trust me.” Pete is going to fall asleep and dream of that laugh. “So, I’ll see you at eleven, yeah? Text me your address.”

It takes Pete until dinnertime to realize that he never told Patrick the passcode to open his phone in the first place.

*

Brunch goes well. Patrick shows up on time, sober and sharp, striped t-shirt and aviators making him look like a fucking movie star as they crawl along the salt-scented stretch of the 405. Patrick cracks a joke across an ocean-view table and a plate of filet mignon benedict somewhere achingly fashionable — and criminally expensive — out in Malibu. Pete laughs, thoroughly captivated. A charm offensive from someone so hopelessly charming is deeply offensive indeed.

Perhaps it’s the ocean air spilling over the terrace, or maybe it’s the way they connect over the impossible odds of growing up barely a suburb apart, but they begin to bond. They talk about high school, how they both lost their senior years to their careers; Pete’s doggedly chasing roles, Patrick’s in a tour bus. Pete is trying to remember the reasons he hates him, but Patrick seems intent on making it impossible. Pete should find this more irritating than he does but instead he’s thinking in adjectives; funny, self-deprecating, intelligent, _fucking gorgeous_. He blinks the last one away, the swipe of a Magna Doodle that’s half-broken, the words still smeared across his cerebral cortex like a eulogy. 

“I’m sorry about the other night,” Patrick offers, reaching for Pete’s hand across white china streaked with Dijon. The gesture is familiar, trails into fingers across the back of Pete’s knuckles like he’s testing the weight of them against his skin. “Seriously, I was _such_ an asshole. I guess I lost out on any chance to actually ask you on a real date, didn’t I?”

What Pete wants to say, what he _should_ say, is yes, Patrick has absolutely no chance of securing anything even resembling a date with him. What Pete _does_ is grin, all teeth and balled cheeks and lips stretched wide, and mutters so Patrick has to lean in, “I could probably be persuaded…”

They’re back in Patrick’s car far too soon. Pete’s watch must be broken because it seems to be suggesting it’s been _three hours_ since they arrived at the restaurant. He doesn’t know what happened to the bill, magicked away like a card trick to be replaced with the ocean rolling by the windows. There’s too much blue; the sky merging into the water as Pete tries to mentally calculate precisely how much champagne he’s downed. He lost count after the first two or three. Isn’t there something dangerous about bubbles and the ocean?

Is this the bends?

“Can I see you again?” Patrick asks outside of Pete’s place, car idling and air conditioning painting Pete’s skin with goosebumps that he blames on the recycled air. They are definitely _not_ caused by the way Patrick is staring at his mouth.

Pete nods so fast his neck burns with it. Like a holiday romance, the driver sitting up front and neighbors and the dude with a camera in the sedan across the street (following them since the restaurant) pale into insignificance as Pete whispers a daydream, “Do you want to come inside?”

He can already see Patrick sprawled across the sheets of the bed from Ikea that Pete’s been meaning to replace since 2004. Pete is waiting, one hand on the door handle and the other braced to expensive leather upholstery. The need that radiates from him is airborne, Patrick is breathing it in and seems entirely unaware, unfazed and unremorseful as he raises his shoulders in a shrug and offers a smile that can only be described as devilish.

“Honestly?” No. Pete doesn’t want _honesty_ if it’s not going to be a yes. “I think — I think we should wait. Maybe next time.”

“Next time,” Pete echoes, choosing to focus on that and not the _maybe_. “Yeah.”

“I’ll call you.” Patrick promises, already scrolling through his phone, sunnies shoved up into his hair. He kisses Pete’s cheek like a gentleman and leaves him to trip down his driveway, punch-drunk and only stinging a little from rejection.

 _You’re a keeper,_ pixels under Patrick’s name inform him on the 4-inch display of his iPhone within an hour, _I hope you weren’t offended I didn’t come in. I wanted to. I’m trying hard to do this right for once._

He isn’t even particularly annoyed when the pictures appear in the press, their fingers linked across crisp, white linen as they toast what’s to come with too many mimosas. Patrick seems to have a way of lowering his defenses.

Pete suspects that this should make him nervous.

Pete (actor, model, known idiot) crushes down suspicion in favor of lust.

*

Patrick has been slowly dying on this cheap leather couch for the past three days.

At least, that’s what it feels like every time he smells himself – sour, nervous sweat swamping under his arms, around his crotch and, inexplicably, the back of his knees – with each twitch of asscheek to cowhide. He’s regretting his decision to allow wardrobe to put him in a dove grey shirt, no matter how much the cute assistant told him it works well with his eyes. Patrick is forced to live with the consequence of visible pit-staining because he, apparently, has an inability to resist a pretty person telling him _he_ looks pretty. The whole situation is irritatingly high school. 

It approaches — death — interminable and executed by a thousand questions of increasing banality. His favorite color? He’s twenty-fucking-seven. He hasn’t had a favorite color since third grade. The couch is orange and so are his socks, peeking out between pant cuffs and black leather loafers. He goes with that.

He wants to bite his nails, to tear at them frantically as the camera stares at him, unblinking and backlit by aggressive studio lighting that makes his head throb in time with his pulse. Sometimes, times like this at least, he wishes for a band to hide behind. Or that he still wore the hats. Andy’s rigorously imposed _no stimulants on press days_ rule does not sit well with Patrick’s _will throw up from social anxiety_ response to people looking at him.

“Are we done yet?” he whines in the green room of another studio, his hair wilting into his eyes. The hair product mingles with sweat to form a substance that feels like napalm as it clogs his lashes. Patrick is one interview away from invoking his constitutional right as an American citizen to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

“Yeah, man.” Travie, his PA, glances up from his phone with a tight smile; a smile that speaks of wanting to be elsewhere and not playing Uncle Buck to an A-list Tia Russell. It remains intensely irritating that since the whole Saturday Night Live _incident_ Andy will no longer allow him to do press unaccompanied. “You did great.”

“Would’ve done better if you’d hooked me up,” Patrick pauses, a sip taken from his water bottle.

Travie grins, lips twisted laconically around white teeth. It’s been too long since they’ve hooked up and Patrick has a free evening stretching ahead.

“No can do man, Andy’s orders,” he shrugs and shifts from one foot to the other. “You didn’t forget you’ve got Butch’s thing tonight, did you? You’re bringing that Pete guy, right?”

Patrick is struck with the double whammy of having forgotten about both his producer’s annual birthday celebration at his house up in the hills _and_ Pete’s very existence. The latter is probably more worrying than the former. Shit, how long has it been? Three days. _Maybe_ four. That’s okay, he’s pretty sure he can pass that off as playing it cool.

So, he smiles, super casual, brows down and lips quirked up, “Sure. Like, why wouldn’t I be? Just… give me a sec, I need to make a phone call. Not to Pete. To, like — my mom. Uh — be right back.”

He calls Pete from the bathroom, door locked and mirror showing him the ghost of a fat, sweaty kid who blushed too hard and never knew where to put his hands. Pete answers on the fifth call, the first four dumped to voicemail after a couple rings but Patrick is nothing if not obnoxiously tenacious.

“Now isn’t a great time,” Pete is entirely polite but palpably furious, like he’s spitting platitudes around a mouthful of pin tacks, “I’m on set.”

“This’ll only take a second,” Patrick assures him, clammy-damp and grey. His hands are shaking, voice even worse but he still makes the effort, still tries to summon up some of the charm. “So, I have this party thing tonight. It’s a friend’s birthday party and it’s not a big deal except — well, except it sort of is in that I’m expected to be there and the whole thing would suck considerably less if — if you would come. Do you want to come? I’d — I’d really like it if you did?”

Pete doesn’t reply right away and Patrick floods the silence with syllables. He makes a beat with background noise because quiet is crushing and, not-so-deep-down, he’s still Patrick Stump: Marching Band Geek asking out the captain of the football team with nothing more than a shitty corsage and a winning smile. The synonym may be labored; Patrick never actually went to prom. “I can send a car! Or — _or_ — I can pick you up? Whatever you’d prefer. Like, about eight? Eight thirty?”

“Patrick,” when Pete speaks his voice is very low and not in a sexy, gravelly _let me pin you to the wall and ruin you_ sort of way, but more an _I’ve had a tension headache for two days and it’s entirely your fault_ sort of way, “it is six in the evening. I am filming until seven. I do not have the knowledge, capacity or _resources_ to conjure up Party Pete in one fucking _hour_.”

Patrick senses the conversation may draw to a close if he doesn’t yank something out of his ass in the next 3.5 seconds, “I’ll send my tailor!” he yelps before Pete can piss over his plans any further. Pete pauses, possibly confused, possibly interested, Patrick ploughs on, “To your studio? Or your place? Whatever, he can meet you there with some stuff. Text me your measurements and — look. This is a birthday party, it’s not exactly red carpet. I just want to spend time with you.”

Honestly, Patrick has no idea why he’s pursuing this quite so aggressively. Factually speaking, he could call at least fifteen people in his little black book (by which he means little grey cell phone) in the next five minutes and come away with at least eight solid leads for a date for the evening. Logic — and pride, God it is absolutely _pride_ — suggest that it’s probably because he doesn’t want to walk out of this bathroom and admit to Travie — and by extension _Andy_ — that Pete is, in fact, very much _not_ his boyfriend.

Patrick takes a deep breath, swallows that pride and offers the last of his self-worth, “Please?” he says, voice soft with sincerity, “I’m sorry I haven’t called. I hate going to this kind of thing and — and you’d be doing me a huge favor. I’d really owe you.”

Pete’s voice is sharp as he says, “Dates are favors now?”

That is _not_ what Patrick meant. That is a deliberate attempt to twist his words and make him sound worse than he actually is. That is _precisely_ what MTV always do when they interview him post-awards show, bow tie long forgotten and nose wet and pink. Embarrassed silence stands in lieu of an answer as he waits for Pete to hang up. Surprisingly, he sighs instead.

“Eight thirty? Sure. I’ll be your John Cusack for the evening, no tailor-made bribe required.”

This seems playful enough for Patrick to cautiously parry it back. “John Cusack? No way, you’re at _least_ an Emilio Estevez, probably like, a Rob Lowe, if we’re being totally honest. Which I guess makes me Molly Ringwald.”

“So, tell me.” Patrick is eager to leap into the flirtation, brow against tile as he smiles into the porcelain. “If you’re Molly, does that mean you’re a natural redhead under all that peroxide?”

“Well.” The mirror informs him that he looks like shit; grey, washed out, hollow-cheeked and red-eyed. Probably in different known galaxies to the cute-as-a-button pop star Pete imagines he’s speaking to. He rakes a hand through his hair and pastes on his best smile to beam on the shiver of sound waves down to Pete. “Play your cards right and maybe you’ll find out tonight.”

Patrick may, or may not, be starting to wonder if this is perhaps his best idea to date. This late-in-the-game fear is not borne of anything Pete has or hasn’t done, not at all. Please understand, Pete is a _cupcake_ of a human being. Patrick’s reticence is hinged entirely on the man staring back from the backlit mirror, the man with a reputation that precedes him across both state lines and international jurisdictions. The man banned from several Asian and European countries. The man who is a collapsing black hole with a decency clause within a decency clause of his record contract, drafted especially for him after an incident involving Lindsay Lohan and a lawsuit brought by the Four Seasons in New York.

Patrick is persuading Pete to date him when really, Patrick should be warning Pete to run.

*

Pete brings a bottle of screw top red wine, picked up from the liquor store on his way back from the studio. He brings it because Patrick said it’s a birthday party and manners — and basic social decency — dictate that one does not show up to a birthday shindig sans bottle. However, the look that Patrick gives him — sixty-percent confusion, thirteen percent indulgence, twenty-seven percent secondhand embarrassment — has him attempting to hide it under the placket of his leather jacket.

Unfortunately, this draws attention to the fact that he’s wearing a _leather jacket_ over skinny jeans (with a button down and tie because _please_ , he’s not a total savage) whilst Patrick — is not. When Patrick said he would send a tailor, he apparently was not bluffing. Gray, bespoke suit, dark shoes, white shirt slashing crisp and shocking to meet the cream pale of the skin at his throat that bleeds into the chemical brightness of his hair.

Pete suspects he should have made more of an effort but Patrick _did_ say it was casual. He _did_ say it was his friend’s birthday party. _Pete_ is dressed appropriately, it’s _Patrick_ who’s chosen not to play by the rules with his Fuck Me suit and his lack of BYOB etiquette.

“You brought that for Butch?” Patrick nods to the bottle and Pete uses every reserve of self-control not to snarl ‘ _no, I was going to down it in the back of the car_ ’ so hot is he with embarrassment. “That’s — sweet. And you look good.”

Patrick is clearly trying his best to soothe the two most glaringly obvious issues Pete is suffering with right now. This means that Patrick possibly, _potentially_ , has the basic framework in place to be a much better boyfriend than Pete initially suspected. It also means that Pete has every reason to feel embarrassed.

“Thanks.” Pete rubs his thumb over his eye socket and stares out of the window at palm trees and powerlines. “It’s — you said it was a birthday party, right? I mean, everyone brings something to a birthday party, don’t they?”

“I…” Silence falls, endless and painful. Pete wants the charming man from Malibu to make his way back into the car and fill it with conversation and charismatic, if bitchy, observation. “Yeah. Of course.”

He elects not to speak for the rest of the journey, twenty-dollar Cabernet warming nicely in his sweaty palms as they roll into Trousdale and through the gates of a mansion that must be worth twenty million. Never before has Pete visited a house that requires another, entirely separate house for its gates. He leaves the bottle in the car rather than humiliate himself further by handing it over. Spontaneous combustion is a real and welcome possibility.

There’s neat triangle of soft, damp skin revealed at the open button of Patrick’s collar. Pete’s having trouble thinking of anything but kissing it as Patrick grins at him across the back seat, Hollywood charm locked in place as he raises his eyebrows and asks, “Shall we?”

They do.

The door swings open and the party swells out, presses onto Pete’s eardrums and threatens to engulf him entirely. He wishes he’d said no. He wishes he’d suggested the hundred and one other far more fun things they could be doing right now that range from marathoning eighties movies to making out like errant teenagers, sloppy mouths and hands that can’t stay still. He wishes for many things on something that may be a shooting star but is probably a low-flying jet. Then, he follows Patrick inside and circulates, circulates, circulates until he realizes, dizzy on champagne and the staggering views out across Hollywood, that he has no idea where Patrick has gone.

“Hey,” someone greets him, whisks another flute from another tray and presses it into Pete’s hand. There’s an arm around his shoulder and an armpit uncomfortably close to his nose as he blinks up. “You came with Patrick, right? I’m Butch. Butch Walker.”

Pete, because he apparently has no social skills in the face of _Butch Walker_ , attempts to swallow his own tongue and blurt out the many inadequate conversation jump points ricocheting around in his skull in one long, idiotic chain of sound, “Happy beautiful home. I mean — I — happy birthday. You — you have a beautiful home.” Pete forgets about swallowing his own tongue and instead attempts to bite it off before it can embarrass him any further. He takes a breath through his nose and reminds himself that whilst he’s a terrible conversationalist, he makes a living playing someone who is not. Maybe tonight he can be a glittering starlet full of red-carpet charm. “I’m Pete.”

“Chad Brightsteel, right?” Butch says, pleasant and polite around a mouthful of Pabst Blue Ribbon that may or may not be ironic.

“Yeah, I guess so,” the laugh is self-deprecating, the delivery brought with open palms and a pin tucked smile that hurts the corners of his mouth, “pays the bills, am I right?”

“Rough gig,” Butch observes as they wind through the crowds. Pete would like to agree that it is in fact as exceptionally rough gig. The thing is, Pete isn’t _actually_ a terrible actor. Pete is, in fact, an exceptionally _good_ actor who has somehow become talented at playing an alarmingly _bad_ actor. “I’m not sure how you do it.”

Pete has excuses, lots of them, most of them are dressed up in shades of _don’t want to sell out_ and _prefer the smaller, organic roles_. But then Pete realizes that Butch is no longer talking about acting when he catches sight of Patrick, cornering a cocktail waitress with what can only be described as reckless intent. Oh, Pete is sure she’s perfectly safe, he seems more focused on relentlessly tossing back the drinks on her tray than he does on mapping a route to her panties. But…

But still.

“Goddammit,” Butch growls.

Pete feels oddly responsible. “I should probably…”

If Pete were forced in this instance by the sudden-onset inception of a hidden camera game show, to describe Patrick using only two words, he thinks those words would be _focused_ and _intense_. Or maybe _flushed_ and _sweaty_. There’s a frown painted to his brow that Pete has only previously seen on artworks in the Getty; a Rembrandt of shadow and gold and single-minded determination. Make no mistake, even tossing back Belvedere martinis like they’re straight Smirnoff, even pink-nosed and flushed, Patrick is the brightest in a room of incredibly bright things. It’s not like starlight, too artificial, more like the streak of orbiting satellites gleaming through city smog on sticky nights. Pete wants to touch even though he knows the stove is too hot, that he’ll be left blistered and burning.

Pete takes half a step forward as Butch mutters into his ear, hot breath and sweet, caramel malt, “He’s like a fucking siren.”

“Oh, hey!” There is no inch of Patrick that doesn’t exude charm as he whisks the final two glasses from the tray and presses one into Pete’s hand. “Sorry, I sort of flaked out on you, I went to the bathroom and got talking to some people and — go ahead, try it, it’s super fucking good — you know how it is, right?”

No. Actually Pete doesn’t. But he likes this animated Patrick, the one with expressive hands and rapier-sharp observations about everyone around them. He likes him enough not to think about the chemical-bright glow in his eyes or the way he sniffs like it’s January in Chicago facing snow and chapped hands rather than early summer in Los Angeles, the night air hot and thick with Jacaranda and gasoline.

“I was just telling Pete all about you,” Butch joins them. It doesn’t take a genius to hear the things he isn’t saying as he clicks his beer bottle against Patrick’s (already empty) glass, “quite a reputation.”

“You know what they say about Hollywood,” Patrick grins, every tooth bared and on display as he curls an arm around Pete’s waist. “Believe everything but what you read in the press, right? But happy birthday, man! Wait, it’s a big one, isn’t it? Fifty?”

The smile Butch wears remains in place, a wound of a grin stamped across a mouth that doesn’t want to shape to it. “Forty-two,” Patrick’s fingertips tighten a little, his grin growing half an inch, “well, have a good time. Oh, and Patrick? Try not to throw up in my pool this time, okay?”

They laugh together — _ha ha ha_ — all false friendliness that Pete fakes because no one has handed him a script and he’s running off improv right now. Butch moves away and Patrick rolls his eyes, theatrical under the flop of his hair. Somewhere in the corner of the room, the DJ shifts seamlessly from No Diggity to Ridin’, a feat Pete finds more than a little impressive. Outside, LA hums below them, the click of heels too high and laughter too sharp buzzing under Pete’s skin like blood.

“Why did you come here?” he asks Patrick around the bob of his head to the beat. Patrick leans closer and frowns like he didn’t quite hear him. “I don’t get it. Why did you come here if you — it doesn’t seem like you and Butch are that close?”

Pete will take ‘what is the biggest understatement of the year,’ for one thousand dollars, Alex.

“ _Why_? Because — because _everyone_ is here. This is what everyone does, we go to parties thrown by assholes we don’t like.”

“ _Everyone_ watches Jersey Shore,” Pete shrugs and takes another sip of his drink. “Doesn’t mean it’s the best idea.”

Patrick finds another drink and Pete tries to pretend it doesn’t make his stomach clench uncomfortably. He tosses it back and, around the olive left clenched between his teeth — Pete is hypnotized, enthralled and tingling at the frame of those lips around the glossy green flesh of the fruit — he says like it’s obvious, “It’s work.”

“I don’t know, man. Can’t work be _fun_?”

It is, no doubt, a shining example of Pete’s inability to read the room that he’s shock-drunk and reeling as Patrick leans forward, closing the distance between their bodies, between their _lips_ , with a delicate breath. Patrick pauses, a heartbeat in the millimeters that separate them, fingertips soft against the line of Pete’s jaw as he whispers, “How’s this for fun?”

In the dark quiet somewhere in Butch Walker’s extensive gardens, Patrick kisses him. Like all first kisses, everything feels off for a moment, noses bumping and lips that don’t quite line up. Teeth dig into his lip as he opens his mouth, the brush of Patrick’s tongue heated and inquisitive and flavored with booze and brine. Some distant part of Pete’s brain — unconsumed by the taste of Patrick’s tongue — recognizes that they’re still moving to the music, hips swaying together as Patrick sucks on the flush of his lower lip.

They step it up a notch as it clicks into place, mouths sliding wet and slippery against one another, hands slipping under-jackets-over-shirts. Kisses like this should be restricted to high school, to back seats of crappy cars in secluded parking lots, all tongue and spit and delicious groping hands.

Patrick’s _mouth_. Oh God. Fucking _God_ , he kisses like he’ll die if he stops, like Pete’s lungs contain the last breath of oxygen in the greater Los Angeles area, like he can find his way onto Pete’s cock via the medium of his lips. Head spun and rabbiting heart, Pete is questioning the likelihood of a contact high, deciphering the taste of Patrick’s tongue for whatever the fuck he was taking in the bathroom. As Patrick slides his thigh between Pete’s and begins to rub, any notion of giving anything resembling a shit is quickly expelled in favor of furious teenage rutting, lost in the shade of the palms that fringe the swimming pool of an A-list producer somewhere in the Hills.

“Hey, I want to show you something,” his dick, Pete assumes, “want to see the best fucking view in Los Angeles?”

Pete knows an excuse to get him alone when he hears one. Maybe if all of the available oxygenated blood in his body wasn’t currently routing itself directly to his cock, he might be capable of thinking it through. But it is and he’s not and so, instead, he follows Patrick around the house, up a staircase and onto a balcony which does, in fact, have the most amazing view across the city that Pete’s seen outside of Google images.

Patrick’s eyes are ethereal, blown black-hole wide and scattered with star-bright glitter. Pete grips onto the wall behind him, unsure if he’s lightheaded from booze or the fear of falling into something he doesn’t understand. He’s not sure he cares enough to work out the difference as Patrick kisses him once more, roaming hands and rolling hips.

His belt is unfastened, quick and deft, button thumbed open and zipper lowered. His nails give before the mortar does, sinking into the wall behind him until they sting and throb. Pete is hard. Agonizingly, embarrassingly hard. So stiff is Pete’s cock that, at this juncture, he no longer needs to worry about telescopic camera lenses. He’s close to certain that the Hubble spacecraft could identify his erection.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” he asks, too breathy to be castigation, the damp patch on his straining underwear standing witness to how into this he actually is. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Patrick’s breath fogs and mingles with the sweat below Pete’s ear, his tongue sliding hotwetsoft over his artery. Half a touch between his legs and he’ll burst out of his skin, torn apart down tattered seams. “But I can say it, if you want me to?” Pete’s hands find the back of Patrick’s head as he decides that there is no possible incarnation of himself in this or any other reality that does not want to hear what Patrick has to say next, “I’m going to get on my knees and suck your dick until you come down my throat.”

Because Pete is an idiot, he continues allowing his mouth to move, pouring out words his brain hasn’t proofread and his cock doesn’t agree to _at all_. “But — but that’s a _glass_ balcony. If anyone — if they — if they look up…”

“Well,” Patrick sinks to his knees and mouths, breath burning, over Pete’s aching, cotton-covered dick, “I guess you’re going to have to be _super-duper_ quiet, aren’t you? Oh, and Pete?” he can’t look down, can only stare out across the city, firefly streetlights scattered on crushed velvet as Patrick turns his head and licks over his wrist, “You probably want to keep your hands on my head. Hide the hair, you know? And if you happen to pull a little? Not gonna judge you.”

His lungs feel like they might collapse, his heart on the verge of rupture, his viscera fighting a war for which can kill him first. There’s a hand, _Patrick’s_ hand, skin-hot and searing, sliding into the waistband of Pete’s boxer briefs. Comet trail heat blazing from fret-roughened fingertips is _not_ helping him to form and execute rational thoughts. His brain is a dying star folding in on itself, each cell drawn tight and quivering, focused slavishly on the pretty pink flicker of a spit-wet tongue played over the Botticelli curve of Patrick’s lower lip.

They pause, Pete’s cock bare in the California breeze, Patrick’s mouth shifting shape to the jut of Pete’s hipbone under copper skin. He looks good on his knees, sea glass gaze unwavering as he adjusts, realigns and frames a fuckable smirk with his made-for-head mouth, “Last chance to say no.”

Pete dismisses the word _no_ from his vocabulary. Forever, probably.

If Patrick doesn’t start sucking his dick immediately, Pete’s sure he’ll die. He’ll pass out and expire on Butch’s balcony, a side article in US Weekly. He hopes, cement scraping under his fingernails, that Joe will pick out a good headshot to run alongside it. Fortunately, Patrick parts his lips, curls his fingers around Pete’s hips and licks a long, wet line along the pulsing, lust-thick length of his swollen-sweet cock.

Platinum blond looks good enough against his skin that Pete could almost imagine trying it out for himself, but not quite as good as wet, red lips slipping down over his dark, hard dick. Patrick sucks like he knows what he’s doing, tongue curling, rubbing the tip just under the nerve-bright head on each upward pull of his mouth. His hands shift, skin burning through denim and cotton to sear brands into the swell of Pete’s ass, dragging him closer, urging more and more down the tight heat of his throat.

Red and orange veined with gold; all Pete can see is the inside of his eyelids, the holographic image of the stars burnt like overexposed microfilm. Hips canted and rocking onto the balls of his feet, he starts to thrust, nudging the gorged flush of the cap of his cock into the soft, wet give of Patrick’s mouthlipsthroat. Pete feels desert-dry and aching, praying to anything listening in the stars, in the flash and glow of airplane wishes dragged in and out of LAX, for some private relief.

Patrick abandons his cock, leaves it stiff and angry-dark, veined thick and heavy, bouncing against a soft, pale cheek and leaving spit-smudged shine as he ducks his head to tongue over the tight swell of Pete’s balls. He’s muttering something, half-crazed and dangerous, stuttering syllables that are caramel-sticky into the dark hair that frames Pete’s cock. His palm is splayed across the tattoo etched between Pete’s hip bones, too hot to be natural, heat searing straight through to coil low and needing in his gut.

“How would you feel about fucking me?” Patrick murmurs around a fresh bruise bitten to Pete’s hip. Pete jolts, electric-sharp and stinging as he stares somewhere between sky blue eyes and the indigo of the horizon where the shoreline bleeds into the ocean. Patrick has his pants open, the flash of his thick, flushed cock sliding wet and slippery through the pale frame of his fingers. Pete takes a deep breath and focuses every neuron, every untapped iota of self-control, on not blowing across his face. “There’s a chair right there, you could sit back, let me ride you. We wouldn’t even need to get undressed. Come on, can’t you imagine it? Don’t you want it?”

Oh God, but _yes_ , Pete can imagine it, can imagine Patrick rocking in his lap, clenching silk-smooth and hot around the aching, throbbing length of his prick. He can almost taste the tang of his own cock on Patrick’s mouth as they kiss, sloppy-slow over Patrick’s shoulder, can imagine the way his nails will sink into the pale line of Patrick’s hips.

But this is not his house, not his chair and not a night he wants to be tossed out of his first Hollywood party in five years because he was caught fucking sky-high pop stars on darkened balconies. He grabs his cock with one hand and shoves Patrick back down onto it with the other, the vibration of his laugh echoing tingles down into Pete’s toes.

Bruised fruit sticky and bleeding out by degrees, Pete’s skull meets the wall behind him as Patrick, thumbs scarring purple into the gold of Pete’s hips, relaxes his throat and swallows him down entirely. Half-drunk and fully insane on the glittering starlight sparkling in the depths of Patrick’s eyes, Pete lets go, gives in and allows the warm rush to coil out and out from the tight knot of his groin.

He comes hard, biting cries into the give of his lip until it’s swollen and sore. He comes with his vision blurred to white and his hearing fuzzed like static as Patrick pulls, sucks, _devours_ the length of his cock. Patrick’s greedy, grasping mouth turns him inside out with misfiring, broken down short circuit loops, each of his wires linked wrong as he fucks the buzz-bright brilliance of his orgasm down the tight heat of Patrick’s throat. Pete is once more thinking of dying, knees buckling, as his heart cracks his ribs from within, his lungs, his gut, his very being threatening to break him apart as he yanks at Patrick’s hair and punctuates the last pulsing throb with a final, hard thrust.

He blinks back to reality by steady degrees.

There are blond hairs caught against the sweat slick of his palms, just a few, but enough that he feels a tingle of guilt in his belly. His cock, softening sticky against his zipper, is streaked with spit and pearlized come, matching the fuck-flushed rawness of Patrick’s mouth. Patrick leans against him, cheek to his thigh and nose to the sweat damp crease of his groin, as he works his own cock furiously. He murmurs as he touches himself, singing soft little repetitions of _oh, oh, oh_. Pete can only watch, half-hazed and floating, as Patrick bites his lip, locks up tense and comes with a cry muffled in Pete’s skin, puddling slick and shining between Pete’s shoes.

Pete opens his mouth, poetic declarations of recent satiation dancing devilishly on the tip of his tongue, betrayed by the lack of functioning brain matter, turned soft and useless by the pulsing power of his orgasm. “ _Fuck._ ”

Patrick hums an agreement, biting kisses to Pete’s stomach as he rubs out the last few drops from the twitching length of his cock. Pete doesn’t object when Patrick reaches up, sliding pale, bitter-salt fingers into Pete’s mouth, letting him suck away the taste of Patrick’s cock and come. Between his legs, his dick gives a final, heroic twinge, a whimpered moan sliding slippery from his throat to shift around the press of Patrick’s fingers between his lips.

“You should’ve fucked me,” Patrick observes almost sadly, a rueful smile smeared across his face. Pete is inclined to agree. Patrick doesn’t look entirely real, some fake glow shimmering from him as he climbs to his feet and presses the heat of his mouth to Pete’s. He tastes of sex, the stickiness of it caught in all the crevices of his mouth that Pete licks with salacious desperation.

“Maybe next time?” he offers around the press of his tongue and Patrick grins against his teeth, recognizing the echo of his own excuse.

“I like you, Pete Wentz.” It seems like he’s trying the shape of the words out for size, framing them against his mouth like the hang of a new suit. “I might even keep you around. Come on, there’s a couple people I want you to meet…”

He’s already spark-bright and shining, glittering Walk of Fame bright as he hustles and jostles Pete — limp, soft and unresisting — back into his pants, down the stairs and into the thrum of the party that pulses on around them. He vanishes into the bathroom and reappears half a glass of champagne later, gleaming a little brighter, talking a few beats faster.

Hollywood is a heartbeat, pumping, pounding, never-ending, ticking beneath asphalt and marble. Everyone’s half a step between glamour and gutter. The serpentine sprawl of the LA river holds them all willing captives, hemming them between dried-out beds and salt-spray Pacific.

Pete pretends, grin painted in place as Patrick leads him to a director with a prime-time budget and a so-fresh-it’s-practically-organic script for a new Iron Man TV series, that nothing about this makes him twitch with unease.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/168268289@N03/46011855912/in/dateposted-public/)

*

Pete doesn’t think he’ll hear back from the director or Patrick and is wrong on both counts.

Joe takes a call the next morning, a request to go in and read for some goofy, semi-regular bit part in the Iron Man show. Pete hasn’t had a request to read for a role in _years_.

“This could be a good career move,” Joe says, like _any_ move away from Chad Brightsteel could possibly be a _bad_ one. “It gets you on screen, gets you noticed. No one’s really talked about you since Overcast Kids. We need to think about your quote, get something fixed.”

“I’ll do it for coffee and a free donut,” Pete admits, too eager, too ready, too willing to please. “And who told you anything about quotes?”

Joe shrugs and goes back to rolling a joint, “Just looking out for you, man.”

Patrick texts him: _Congratulations on the audition!_ _I know you’ll kill it. Let me take you out to dinner to celebrate x_

Pete never told him he got the call.

It probably doesn’t matter.

_i have a better idea. ill pick u up saturday @2 DONT FORGET YOUR SUNBLOCK xxx_


	2. We're different, but we're better when we pretend we're both the same

Patrick is trying his damnedest not to make this into something it’s not. Clean cut boys-next-door like Pete don’t express interest in up-to-the-neck social black holes like Patrick unless there’s something in it for them.

Patrick has done his part. Sucked Pete’s dick and secured him an audition he would never have got within touching distance of otherwise. Pete should be through with him, exposure obtained and his foot in the door. Yet Patrick’s sitting in the passenger seat of Pete’s elderly Wrangler, driving him south along the 405 to some as yet undisclosed location.

(“What’s the name for a car that’s too old to be cool, but not quite old enough to be a classic?” Pete asked, hand pressed affectionately to sun-bleached bodywork. _Shitty_ , Patrick’s brain provided instinctively. “Vintage,” his mouth supplied heroically.)

Based purely on the direction of travel, Patrick has a horrible suspicion that they’re heading to Laguna Beach. This means surfing (fuck, Andy will laugh his _balls_ off) or art exhibits. Given that Pete is wearing board shorts and a Hawaiian print muscle tank even Tom Selleck might consider a bit much, all indicators point to the former. Patrick is swiftly revisiting his decision to attempt this sober. Still, at least if he’s sober his chances of drowning are significantly reduced.

Conversation eludes him, silk-slippery and scraping against the tips of his fingers, each start botched and awkward, words exchanged for awkward glances hidden behind dark lenses when one or the other gets caught staring. If being clean is so fantastic, why does sobriety tie his tongue and leave him tedious and dull, staring down at his shoes in embarrassed silence?

“So,” Pete begins, fingers twisting the knob on the radio. Patrick quirks his head to look at him, floundering desperately for the lifebelt of easy conversation. Pete flushes pink and stammers silent, thumbs drumming against the steering wheel as he goes back to staring intently at the road ahead. “Never mind.”

Patrick huffs a deep breath through his nose, holds it for a beat and then lets it hiss out slowly, slipping off his aviators to buff them casually against the hem of his shirt, “Okay, I’m just gonna say it. Yes, I’ve seen your dick, I’ve sucked you off and — not gonna lie, seriously — it’s a _nice_ dick, okay? A-plus and extra credit. Probably one of the best I’ve had in my mouth. Are things going to be this weird between us _every_ time I see you with your cock out?”

A full verse and chorus of the bubblegum pop song playing on the radio; that’s how long Pete stays silent, that’s the length of time Patrick refuses to look away. Pete burns from pink to crimson and back again, throat working frantically as he swallows, bites his lip and glances at Patrick from the corner of his eye.

“Who says you’ll get to see it again?” he asks, the challenge betrayed by the way his voice slides up half an octave, thin and strangled as his eyes, half-hidden behind cheap, muscle beach sunglasses, stray to Patrick’s mouth.

Patrick slides his tongue along his lower lip, finishing with a flourish of a bite, teeth sinking slowly into the opulent flush of it, “Are you saying I won’t?” Pete grins, golden and summer-bright, toothsome smile and all-American charm as he tugs a hand through his artfully mussed hair. Patrick pretends not to be distracted by the dark flash of trimmed-short underarm hair — who knew _that_ was one of his kinks? — and presses on smoothly, “So, where the fuck are you taking me?”

“It’s a surprise,” Pete says, wriggling his nose in a way Patrick could totally get into as he cranks up the radio and tosses a sleeve of CDs into Patrick’s lap. “Alright, as the only person present with a Grammy, you’re in charge of the tunes.”

“Dude, okay. First off, I was _nominated_ , I never actually _won_. Second,” Patrick holds up a hand, fingers splayed, “we do _not_ say ‘ _tunes_ ’. Rule number five.”

“And what are rules one through four?” Pete asks, raised eyebrows and suggestive smirk as he brushes his knuckles lightly along the side of Patrick’s thigh, skittering touch chasing goosebumps under tight denim.

Patrick laughs, soft and low in the back of his throat, eyes closed for a second as he lets his fingers roam the heft and press of the folder on his lap. He runs his thumb along the sleeves, tugging out a disc at random and feeding it into the CD player without looking. He’s a fan of surprises and suspects Pete can be persuaded to run along with him with a nudge, the slightest push as he teeters on the edge of Class-A-list insanity.

“I’ll let you know as they come up.”

Sure Shot rips from the speakers and Pete lets out a whoop, glowing bright as sun-capped waves as he laces their fingers together across the parking brake. There’s a deep-buried itch down in Patrick’s bones, a stirring restlessness that he manifests in bitten-raw lips and the nervous bounce of his foot against the floorboard in time to the beat. Beastie Boys pose an adequate distraction as they lose themselves in debate, flipping songs back and forth, arguing over the track list arrangement until Patrick almost forgets the burning ache of the craving, the pounding headache screaming out for chemically enhanced dopamine.

He bumps back to reality in a parking lot that’s too hot, bright, crowded, scowling at Pete across the trunk of the Wrangler.

“I can’t go in the water,” he insists, wishing he didn’t sound quite so pathetically petulant. Pete raises his eyebrows and purses his lips; a portrait of apathetic. “Seriously, I didn’t bring any shorts.”

Pete roots through a duffle bag of roughly the same vintage as the car, grey and red striped polyester that Patrick is sure conforms to no modern fire safety regulations. He hands over a pair of loose, black shorts without a word.

Patrick stares down at the shorts, “I’ll burn.”

Within moments, a bottle of sunblock and an aqua blue rash guard are pressed on top of the shorts.

“I…” he considers for a moment before pulling out his trump card. “I can’t swim.” Patrick is lying, he absolutely _can_ swim. He has a pool for fuck’s sake, a pool Pete has seen from the comfort of his kitchen. This is the worst, most undignified attempt at a lie he’s pulled out of his ass in his twenty-seven years of existence. Still, he’s totally committed now. “Like, I’ll drown. And you’ll be to blame. Can you handle that kind of responsibility, Peter? What the fuck are you gonna tell my manager? Fuck, what will you tell my _mom_?”

Pete grins and dips into the bag once more. A pair of Nemo water wings join the loot stashed in Patrick’s arms.

“Come on, it’ll be fun. It’s just bodyboarding,” Pete says. He might as well say _it’s just advanced astrophysics_. Patrick doesn’t _sport_. And those people hurling themselves into the crystal blue surf look suspiciously like they _sport_ on a regular basis. _Pete_ looks like a keen sporter, all buff muscle under gold gleam skin. Patrick can picture him jogging along the waterfront in Santa Monica, shirt off and sweat-slick in the rose gold glow of summer sunset.

Patrick can also imagine him arriving back at his place, the smell of his skin, the way he might taste if Patrick mouths over the delicious little hollow at his hip bone.

“Fine,” he scrambles into the back seat of the Jeep, shuffling hips and elbows as he wriggles out of his jeans and polo shirt and into the shorts and rash guard under the, frankly undignified, cover of a beach towel that somehow smells of wet dog, “If I die, it’s on you, Wentz.”

Patrick expects a lot of things; he expects to be humiliated, he expects Pete to laugh at him, he mostly expects to fucking _drown_. What he doesn’t expect is to have fun. Submerged in salt water, hands cutting through currents as they paddle out to the lower waves, it blooms warm, soft and tangible in the center of his chest.

“You’re a natural,” Pete assures him, brine-glazed lips skating shyly against Patrick’s temple. He rode a wave barely two feet high, there are six-year-olds out in the riptide, balanced on surfboards like they were born in the water. Staying afloat on his belly through the ripple of a wave hardly seems like an achievement worthy of celebration.

But Patrick likes the praise and fishes for more. “I look like a total dumbass.”

What can Pete see? What is it about a short, skinny little dude, bleach blond hair slicked to pale skin, that makes him grin and bite into the thick curve of his lower lip? Patrick presumes it’s the promise of fame, of the infamy associated with his name that will keep Pete’s agent’s phone ringing for as long as they keep appearing in gossip rags side by side.

“You look fucking amazing,” Pete assures him, sincere enough to drag Patrick into the make believe for an ill-advised moment. “Eleven out of ten, would definitely bang.”

There’s a photographer on the beach, lens focused on them out in the water. Patrick strokes a hand through Pete’s hair and pulls him in for a kiss, shifting slightly so the camera will catch the way his hair falls onto his brow, the line of his jaw as he tilts his head up slightly. Pete’s mouth tastes of salt. “What do you say we head back to my place? We could order in, watch a movie, maybe? I know a fantastic little Korean place.”

Heartbeat ticking higher, thumbs twitching, the itch crawls through his veins. It tacks to blood cells, thrust around his system with each pound of his pulse in his ears. He’s already internally tapping out a text to Travie and figures he’ll come up with a good excuse once they’re back at the house. He wants Pete there too, wants to ride the high with him, fucked through the ionosphere until he’s head-swum in starlight.

“Sounds good,” Pete’s eyes are copper-bright, good luck pennies as he presses his fingertips into the soft skin above Patrick’s hips. Patrick shivers, crown to toes, and slides a hand over the curve of Pete’s ass. “I’ll need to swing by my place, grab some sweats or something.”

“No.” Patrick can’t spare that kind of time, he needs to get home, fuzzed vision desperation making his voice crack; reason is a smashed mirror, sharp and dangerous. Pete blinks at him, confused, and Patrick’s jaw grits hard — he doesn’t need this conversation right now. “No, it’s fine. I mean, I’m sure I’ve got something that’ll fit you. I’ve been like, _every_ size the past couple years.”

Pete nods and dawdles in returning their boards, drags his feet when it comes to changing into dry clothes and messes with his phone endlessly once they’re strapped in with the engine idling. Patrick stares at the waves and reminds himself not to snap, not to tell Pete to hurry the fuck up as he swigs from a bottle of water and watches the colors out in the surf.

When they turn onto the 405 once more, Patrick feigns sleep, head pressed to the cool glass of the window as he counts the bumps in the road.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/168268289@N03/31122977457/in/dateposted-public/)

*

Pete is not stupid.

Many of his actions may indicate the exact opposite of this supposition, including but not limited to becoming involved with a man he met barfing in a club bathroom. But, actually, Pete is pretty smart and has the wasted college scholarship to prove it. This means that Pete is not entirely surprised — disapproving, yes, shocked, no — to see a discreet black Mercedes on the driveway when he pulls up outside of Patrick’s house.

“Friend of yours?” he asks brightly, nodding towards the dude slouched low in the driver’s seat, his cap peak tilted down over his eyes as he snoozes, picked out by the beam of the Wrangler’s headlights.

Pete has met enough of the guys that feed Joe’s seemingly bottomless weed habit to recognize a dealer when he sees one.

“Friend, errand runner, portfolio handler, secretary,” Patrick ticks each one off on his fingers, irritation filling the cab of the car as Pete blinks at him in confusion. “He’s my PA, he’s whatever I pay him to be.”

Honestly, Pete has no polite answer to that, “Oh. I just thought—”

“Yeah? I can take all sorts of guesses about what you _thought_ ,” Patrick sneers, pretty lips tucked up into something ugly. “Next time, maybe _don’t_.”

He parks in silence. He seriously considers turning the car around and heading back to the valley, to his couch and the pint of ice cream buried in the depths of his freezer. He has excuses, _good_ ones; Monday’s _Guilty Pleasure_ script unread on his coffee table, an audition on Tuesday he needs to prepare for. But he’s come this far and, as a fully committed idiot, he makes the questionable decision to see this through to its conclusion as he unclips his seatbelt and slips from the car. Behind them, the PA climbs out of his Merc, unfolding NBA limbs and stretching languidly as he follows them to the front door.

“Sorry,” Patrick passes a hand over his eyes once the three of them are inside. For a moment Pete is about to tell him it’s okay but then he realizes the apology isn’t directed at him. He fidgets with the zipper on his duffle bag as the PA looks him over slowly. “The 405 was like a fucking parking lot. Travie, this is Pete. Pete, this is Trav, my assistant.”

“Hey man,” Travie shakes his hand and gives him a look that’s half appraisal, half naked apology. Travie is the kind of gorgeous that’s almost irritating; the very definition of tall, dark and handsom. Is he standing too close to Patrick? Is that hug more familiar than it should be? Fuck, is Pete _jealous_? “How’s it going?”

“Good.” Pete’s reply seems to bounce off all of the marble, chrome and glittering glass that make up the entrance hall of Patrick’s house, echoing back over and over and slicing into him as he shivers, awkward, pathetic and out of place. Everything is so uncomfortably white, gleaming clinically under the glow of the post-modern chandelier above their heads. “It’s — I’m really good.”

Travie’s hands are shoved down into the pockets of his baggy jeans, sliding low on narrow hips. He’s exquisite. Pete would fuck him — has Patrick? _Does_ Patrick? “I hear you got him into the ocean.”

As Travie’s eyebrows raise and the silence ticks on from casual and into uncomfortable, Pete realizes he ought to reply, “Uh, yeah. He, uh — he was a natural.” This newly acquired inability to talk like an adult is a deeply unwelcome development. “Total surf bum.”

“Trav?” Patrick inclines his head towards the door that Pete recalls leads to the kitchen. Travie moves to follow him and Pete does too, pausing as Patrick raises a hand in his direction, eyes roving the galleried hallway above them like he’s searching for an excuse. “Hey, why don’t you go take a shower? Get rid of the sand?”

Silhouetted in the doorway, Patrick smiles, encouraging lips and impatient eyes. Pete isn’t stupid. He’s not.

“It’s — it’s just off my room.” Pete knows this. He knows this from a night spent curled on the floor of an unfamiliar bedroom, watching a stranger sleep. “Uh, straight up the stairs, door at the end of the hallway? There’s shower gel, towels, shampoo, help yourself. My closet is up there, too, grab whatever you want. I need to talk to Trav real quick, then when you’ve washed up, we can… order food.”

“Right,” Pete nods as Patrick grins with the force of sunlight on surf, relaxing back into his skin as he turns for the kitchen.

“Nice meeting you,” Travie says, loud enough for Patrick to hear then dropped to a whisper as he passes. “Good luck, man, seriously. You’re gonna need it.”

This isn’t the first warning Pete has received. First Butch, now Travie. Two dates and two harbingers of terrible things to come. There is a saying about listening at doors and hearing what you deserve. Pete is not stupid. He fiddles with the strap of his duffle bag only long enough to hear two things.

“You got it?” Patrick’s voice, clipped anxious and short then bursting like summer rain, sweet and soothing. “Dude, you’re the fucking best!”

“I’m not doing this again,” Travie mutters. “I have an MFA in Classical Composition, I’m not your fucking runner, man. I mean it. Next time, you get it yourself, yeah?”

Pete shivers, heart throbbing messy and sharp as knives as he rises to his feet and heads back across the hallway. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what they’re talking about. It takes the exact opposite of a genius (Pete is a magnanimous man, he can accept this is him) to make it into something innocent. A mix of the new album he said was about to drop, contracts to sign. Travie could have brought him _anything._

The stairs are in the same direction as the door. He could slip away, climb into his car, roll through those motion sensitive gates and back to his life of mediocrity. He could forget the name Patrick Stump as anything more than a fun story at parties. He could go home, order pizza and jerk off in the privacy of his bedroom. There’s no more than ten feet between the door handle and the foot of the stairs.

Pete is not stupid. But being smart and being an idiot are not mutually exclusive, or so it would seem. He climbs the stairs and heads for Patrick’s bedroom, rifling through the walk-in closet for something that might fit. There are workout clothes in every size from an XL to a small, identical and folded neatly; dark gray sweatpants and white Adidas t-shirts, two pairs of running shoes lined up carefully underneath. There are other things; a Coltrane shirt in three different sizes and states of wear, twelve identical pairs of skinny jeans in charcoal gray and a range of waist sizes.

Patrick has clearly struggled with his weight. Does he keep the old clothes out of laziness? Reminders of a life he won’t return to, calling him out like schoolyard taunts every time he grabs a pair of jeans? Or does he see his body shape as temporary, a constantly fluxing battle waiting to be hidden behind baggy hoodies and jeans with a little more give? Pete grabs a pair of sweatpants and a ratty-looking Bowie shirt and heads for the bathroom, crushing down the growing sense of unease.

It takes twenty minutes — twenty long, cold, infuriating minutes — before Pete figures out how to work the shower. A lesser man might give up, but Pete is stubborn with salt dried to grit between his toes and sand caught in the crack of his ass. So, he perseveres, pushing buttons, turning knobs and, at one point, shrieking in a deeply undignified manner as ice cold water sprays from a wall-mounted jet straight at his crotch.

The reward, the payoff for a tenacious inability to give in and run a bath or wash off at the sink, is the pounding heat of a full body massage, delivered by jets seemingly designed to hit every muscle torn sore by a day in the surf. Pete groans, sagging a little as a particularly powerful surge finds the small of his back, shampoo that smells of ginger and mint lathering luxuriously under his fingers. He’s half hard but willing it down, close to convinced that heading downstairs with a visible erection probably isn’t the kind of vibe he wants to give out.

“Hey.”

Pete yelps, blinking soap into his eyes as a gust of ice-cold circulated air prickles him goose bumped. Through the burnt-bright fog of caustic chemicals he sees a shape; cream pale and platinum blond, the underwater ripple effect hazing a silhouette of Patrick reaching past him for something right behind his head.

“I—” Pete starts to speak, convinced his brain will provide something adequate if his mouth gets them going. His brain resolutely refuses to comply, too focused on reminding him not to blink soap into his eyes to worry too much about this gross invasion of his personal space. “You — uh—”

“Sorry, just need to grab my shampoo.” Patrick presses in close, skin too hot, lips skimming Pete’s shoulder as he desperately scrubs the lather from his eyes. “Oh, shit, did you — come here, let me help.”

Pete is almost certain, as Patrick grabs the handheld shower attachment and carefully points the stream into his eyes, that the administration of first aid doesn’t need to be carried out by someone standing close enough for their cocks to brush. His erection chooses this moment to really carpe its diem and jumps effortlessly from _semi_ to _raging_ in a few rapid beats of his heart.

Assuming that no better ideas are going to occur to him, Pete closes his eyes, leans in and brushes his mouth to Patrick’s.

Lips on lips, wetmessy and damp with spit around clashed teeth; this is kissing with intent, kissing to bruise, kissing to fuck. A warm hand finds his dick and swoops him dizzy, each lingering blood cell still clustering around his cerebral cortex quickly relocating south to fill and flush his twitching, raw-nerved cock. He moans, back crashing to the tiles and arching his hips, straining on tiptoes as Patrick strokes the swollen length of him from base to tip and back again.

“Wait,” Pete manages to gasp with the last breath of air stolen from the pocket between their mouths. Patrick blinks at him, eyes lake-wide, the faintest rim of riptide around the deep velvet darkness of an artificially blown night sky. “I thought we were — there was gonna be take out. And a movie.”

It sounds so charmingly quaint when he says it out loud, so ridiculously The Wonder Years that it’s close to laughable. What was Pete imagining out in the surf? MSG-flavored kisses smeared on slick lips as they watched a shitty action thriller then fumbled through hand jobs like high school kids? Maybe they could split a case of wine coolers and talk about going all the way next time. Stupidstupidstupid.

“I mean,” Patrick purrs against his ear, skin prickling with livewire touch, “if that’s what you want to do…”

They both look down; hard, thick cocks brushing against one another, against the pale bumps of Patrick’s knuckles, dewed with the diamond shine of shower spray. Patrick’s paleness is full-body, skin like cream scattered gold with freckles in interesting places that Pete could trace and lick like dot-to-dot puzzles. Copper hair smatters his chest, his stomach, catching glittering droplets and flecks of foam from the lather of shower gel worked over Pete’s skin. He looks the type to wax, Pete’s kind of into the fact that he doesn’t.

Pete is leaking already, the blood-dark head of him slicked and crowned with pearl. Patrick’s laugh curls around them with the steam, his grin slashed wide on wet, red lips. His hands wrap around Pete’s hips, pressing in flush and groaning something hot and slurred into Pete’s throat.

“I can leave if you want,” he whispers around the sink of his teeth into Pete’s collarbone. Pete mirrors Patrick’s stance, gilt-gold fingers wrapped to marble-pale hips as he crowds Patrick up against the shower screen.

“Stay.”

Because Pete is an idiot, because he’s hard and aching and Patrick is so desperately pretty, he falls to his knees. He kisses adoration that skates whisker-close to objectification into the line of Patrick’s hips. He’s worshipping at an altar of promised carnality as kisses turn to bites turn to bruise-bloom sucking, the shape of his lips branding ruby into alabaster, urged on by Patrick’s whimpering moans.

Pete licks along the crease of Patrick’s groin, tasting salt, knees burning from the grit of sand on the shower floor. Patrick has the most gorgeous cock, thick and curved, capped dark with blood and crowned with pearl. Nose trailing through red-gold curls, Pete pauses, smiling up through steam and spray, his thumbs digging hard into Patrick’s hip bones.

“I fucking _knew_ you were a redhead.”

Patrick groans, fingers knotting into Pete’s hair, nails scraping over his scalp as Pete takes him down. Veined velvet, soft skin and salt-sharp pre-come, Pete can taste the ocean and feel the blood-tight heat of him against his tongue. Patrick’s head rolls back, throat twitching like his cock as bleach blond slicks to the rose bloom flush of his brow.

“Strawberry fucking _blond_ , asshole.”

He sings through his scales in whimpered moans, rising to his toes with each pushed down swoop of Pete’s mouth. Cock fisted in his hand, Pete strokes himself as he sucks and curls his tongue, shotgunning sensation with every hissed hush curse and fucked out gasp that echoes around them. Pete’s dick is going to explode, to burst apart down the seams as he grinds himself desperately into his palm.

Slickwetmessy, he slides off, pulls back, twists against the hold Patrick has on his hair and groans, “Turn around. Fuck — turn around.”

White skin pushed to dark marble, Patrick stretches like a Da Vinci, palms anchored flat, legs spread and pretty pink cock caught against the tile. Tongue chasing shower spray like raindrops against the anatomically perfect curve of his ass, Pete surrenders to the lust curling smoke in his belly and bites, hard, into the plush round of Patrick’s ass. He pulls away whispering desire through Patrick’s whimpers, teeth scoring ruby on ivory, a paradigm of possession.

Patrick’s into it, yeah, Pete can tell. He’s definitely getting off on the sink of teeth and the suck and pull of a wet mouth across both peach soft, moonlight pale rounds of his ass. Back arched and hips thrust back, he begs without saying it for pressure against the tight pink twitch of his hole. Instead, Pete marks him up, bruises him a spectrum of reds and roses, mouth branded onto heat-flushed skin. Pete abandons his own cock, convinced he’s two good strokes from spattering white across the black shower wall. He wants more, wants to sink inside and feel Patrick tighthotdesperate around him.

“You want this?” Pete asks, tongue stroking soft over the gold-flecked rim of Patrick’s asshole. The whine he gets in response bolts like lightning straight through his cock, shuddering sensation root to tip and back again. “Come on, say please, that’s a good boy.”

Patrick laughs, gasped thin and breathy as he glances back over his shoulder, eyes deepwidedark, blown wide open and lips slashed in a smirk, “I don’t fucking beg. Go fuck yourself.”

Hot, slick skin pushed to hot, slick skin, Pete rises to his feet and bites a bruise shaped like his lips to the back of Patrick’s neck. He has no idea who this man is, the one blazing with confidence as he sinks his fingertips into pale hips and punctuates his words with a hard nip of his teeth to Patrick’s earlobe, “Or how about I fuck _you_?”

“Yeah, right,” Patrick’s smirk sparkles between them, “I’ll take your cock, but _you’re_ the one getting fucked.”

It’s a magician’s trick, a sleight of hand, as Patrick conjures lube and a condom from amongst shampoo and shower gel with exclusive names and expensive scents. Bottle in his hand and foil between his teeth, he passes it to Pete on a kiss, tongue flicking over lips and leaving the packet snagged in the grasp of Pete’s mouth.

Cock like a sunburn, hot and tight, Pete rolls down the rubber with fingers fumbled fat with anticipation, nerve endings sparking Tesla coils as he glances up. He can’t breathe, can’t think, can barely move as he takes in Patrick, ass pushed out for his delectation as he works a lube-slippery fingertip around the rim of his hole.

He’s going to explode, to blow away like so much dust in the face of a feast of skin like milk and eyes like SoCal surf. Staggered steps trip him clumsy as he presses close, as he joins the trace of those fingertips and skitters across delicate skin. Patrick shivers, Pete’s cock twitches a response.

“Let me,” he murmurs, reaching for the lube as his vision loses focus, “come on, let me.”

Patrick considers him, smirk sharp enough to cut, lip bitten and utterly fucked-raw beautiful under the cascade of glittering diamond spray. He nods, a sharp jerk of his chin and turns back, hands braced to the shower screen and ass presented like a gift, “One finger, not too much lube. I like it tight and I like it hard, you understand?”

“Whatever you say, peaches.” Pete is only half as cocky as he pretends to be, desperation driving him demented as he slicks his middle finger and, hand braced to the plush of Patrick’s side, presses it to the soft, pink give of his hole. “Is this what you want?” he asks, entirely rhetorically, like there’s any question about what it is that Patrick wants, glowing gold against jet as he pushes back to Pete’s hand.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Patrick snaps, rhetoric reflected right back at Pete as he laughs, loses the sound in the wet skin of Patrick’s shoulder.

Slippery-slick, he slides inside, presses down right to the web of his fingers. He searches, searches, _finds it_ , fingertip bumping over that tight little aching thrum that bucks Patrick’s hips, that stutters him senseless and has him fucking back with moans that wrap around Pete’s cock and squeeze. Those noises again, ‘ _oh oh oh’_ , echoing from a balcony up in the hills, a gasp for each rut, each rolling wave of his ass against Pete’s finger.

They’re both bored of the game far too quickly.

“Fuck me,” it’s not a request but a demand, blown on a breath, “hard.”

Pete is not a man who requires a second invitation.

God, but Patrick is responsive. Each brush of Pete’s fingertips summons an operatic symphony of lust from lips bitten raw and swollen, each nudge of his cock between pale thighs sends him twitching, rolling, rubbing back against the planes and angles of Pete’s pecs and abs. He’s hissing curses around a mouth that can’t stay still, stammering demands like he still thinks he’s in charge. Pete likes this, wants this. Only this. He brings his cock to the tight-twitch demand of Patrick’s hole and claims the whore-flush rose of his mouth in a kiss like a hold up as he sinks inside.

It’s perfect.

It’s tightness, an indescribable and aching dearth of give that envelops each tender inch of Pete’s blood-gorged cock. It’s a desperate plunder of sensibility that leaves him airless and suffocating in sandalwood-scented steam, nails slicing wounds into the pale curve of Patrick’s hips. Pushed up against the shower screen, each inch of his skin smeared flush to the glass, Pete wonders how Patrick looks from the other side, how his face contorts as he takes him deep and — God, oh _God_ , he’s so fucking _tight._

When Patrick shivers, Pete feels it. He feels each inch of fluttered tension from the point his lips touch the wetslick heat of Patrick’s throat, through the pulse of his cock and down to the tips of his toes braced to ridged granite and bracketed by Patrick’s feet.

Patrick offers no reprieve, no moment of calm compliance before he’s twisting, rutting and demanding against Pete’s hips. Each jerk of his body spikes something sharp and brilliant, a thread of heated sensation that slicks back and forth between Pete’s brain and his dick, fit-start jolts that fizz like shaken soda cans. His thoughts are nothing but spilled liquid, pooling in all of the wrong places, his chest aching sore for breath. Is this temporary insanity?

“Told you _hard_ ,” Patrick snarls, demanding.

Pete had almost forgotten that moving was a thing, that the roll and slide of his hips could be better than this; pushing himself as deep inside as he can go and holding, buried in tight heat. Pete is numb through his fingertips, through his toes, breathing too fast, too shallow, stuttering on a contact high. He watches as he pulls out, easing Patrick’s cheeks apart so he can see the way the rubbered length of his cock slides free and pushes back home. Patrick rocks up onto his toes with the press in, ass curved out as he curls around his own cock. He’s touching himself.

“Fuck, how do you look from the other side of this glass?” Pete presses his fingertips to the shower screen, punctuation for externalized verbal pornography. He’s thrusting hard now, how Patrick wanted, jolting fizzed sensation into the base of his spine with each slam of his hips.

“I look incredible. I have a camera.” Something gives in Pete’s groin, some uncoiled heat flaring like forest fire at the thought of how those two sentences link together. Who has he filmed fucking him in this bathroom? Pete is tormented by the image of Travie, tall and dark and wrapped around Patrick. “We can set it up sometime. God — _fuck_ — yes, there, like that!”

Like that.

Pete rocks his hips, Patrick curls around the fist on his cock, teeth gritted and eyes closed. Each thrust is a white dwarf cataclysm of rubbed raw nerve endings. He scrapes the puckered pad of his thumb across the stiff, tight bud of Patrick’s pretty, pink nipple and feels him shudder, full body rolling as he chokes on a groan.

Like that. Like this. Like everything and nothing as he licks hot skin and bites bruises of his dental records into a canvas of unmarred marble. This isn’t a fuck but a battlefield. They’ll leave with scars, with marks branded into their skin, a bruise, a bite, the press of nails and slam of bodies. Patrick is fucking him with intent and no mistake, each thrust met with the slam back of his hips, free hand twisted into Pete’s hair as he sucks on his tongue over his shoulder.

If Pete thought he might die at the party, Patrick on his knees and lips around his cock, he was not prepared for this. This aneurysm, this embolism, this cardiac arrest _completion_ as Patrick stiffens, twists and pushes back in exactly the right way. He yanks so hard against Pete’s scalp that he’s sure there’ll be a clutch of coarse dark hair wound between pale fingers when he pulls away. He ruts so desperately that Pete’s convinced his dick will come away bruised. There can be no end to this, Pete could never, _will never_ , be satisfied nor sated of this need. A dying man in a desert drought, he’ll cling to Patrick like an oasis.

When he comes, he thinks he loses consciousness for a second, vision washed white and blood ringing in his ears until they fuzz like static. His cock throbs, it aches and it stings with the pressure and force of his orgasm, each pound of it striking in time with the pulse of his pulpedredmessy heart.

He slumps, cheek to Patrick’s back, jolting choppily to the rhythm of Patrick’s hand on his prick.

His thumb traces the swollen, fucked-out rim of Patrick’s hole, stretched around the softening girth of his cock. Patrick shivers and spits a demand around a clenched jaw. “I’m not done, even if you are. Eat me out.”

“Say please.” Pete says, skin shock-shook as he plumbs the depths of him with the sensitive length of his half-hard cock.

“Fucking tops,” Patrick mutters, curse-sharp and acidic. “Fine — pretty please?”

He has an attitude when he’s getting fucked. Pete likes that.

He slides free, slides to his knees and slides Patrick open with grasping thumbs. He’s fucked him raw, two fingers slipping in with ease as he finds his prostate, tongue lapping over nerves blown bright and burning. Patrick groans, hand speeding on his cock, “God, _God_ , you shouldn’t have used a condom, so fucking hot…”

Pete’s inclined to agree, strung out and dizzy at the thought of lapping the taste of himself, of his come and cock, from the tight heat of Patrick’s hole. His prick is pulsing hard enough to hurt, twinging out a swan song against his thigh. Patrick comes with Pete’s tongue inside of him, gossamer pearl streaking the shower screen as he folds around his fist with a cry. He shudders aftershocks around the invasion of Pete’s fingers, hissing curses and half-sense on a tongue sticky with need until he slides, slumps, slithers to the floor of the shower and curls in Pete’s lap.

Blissed out, fucked out, halfway to passed out.

They kiss, skin corrugate-curved at the fingertips under summer storm shower spray. Patrick is gentle, reverent, attitude forgotten as his fingers tug through Pete’s slicked down hair, summoning sensation like shockwaves as they press together.

“You’ll stay?” he asks, little boy lost and wide-eyed. His lips are so pink, so bitten raw and fuck-flushed as he sucks the bottom one with charming uncertainty. “Please, I — please stay?”

Pete smiles. “I’ll stay.”

The sheets of the bed tangle damp beneath them, snagging on their skin as Pete lies in the bracket of Patrick’s thighs, biting kisses to his throat as Patrick moans and whimpers, rubbing cat-like and desperate into each touch. There’s a tiny baggie on the nightstand, empty.

They kiss, hands in hair and tongues on skin, drawing breath from one another until Pete’s sure he’ll asphyxiate. Patrick demands full-body touch, legs tangled, grinding up and into Pete as his pulse fuzzes static in his ears. The taste of his tongue brands to the shape of Pete’s mouth, the whorls and ridges of his fingertips carved into his skin like tattoos.

When Pete’s cock swells and stiffens once more, Patrick jerks him off, keeps it slow and dirty and dressed up in showmanship. Afterward, he licks away the come smeared on Pete’s stomach and chest then goes right back to kissing him until Pete’s jaw aches and his skin flames with friction burn. It doesn’t take Pete long to figure out that Patrick has a thing for having his Adam’s apple sucked, moans vibrating like Morse code against Pete’s lips.

They half-watch a movie on the giant screen in Patrick’s room, concentration on the narrative exchanged for the shape of one another’s mouths. Patrick’s barely half-hard when he asks Pete to finger him. He insists he doesn’t need to come, he just wants the sensation. Pete does it for the way Patrick clenches around him, the way he grunts and moans and thrusts down onto his hand. Pete tries everything but fucking him, fingers, tongue, quick-clever mouth, until Patrick pulls him in with a giggled groan.

They fuck. Slow and easy with Patrick loose and lazy under him.

It must be three in the morning when Patrick rummages in a drawer and produces a fat blunt, lighting it up and sharing it in deep draws with Pete. It’s not really his scene but he’s spent enough time around Joe that it doesn’t seem shocking to seal his mouth over Patrick’s and shotgun sweet smoke into his lungs that leaves him relaxed and soft down to his bones. He coughs — the first few draws anyway — and Patrick giggles, fucked in each sense of the word.

“You actually like me,” Patrick whispers, awed. It’s not a question but a statement cast in wonder by eyes glowing ethereal in the lamplight. Pete pulls him a little closer and kisses away the tang of his own come coupled with the taste of Patrick’s mouth. He’s more than halfway to sleep, curled around the heat of Patrick’s body.

He’s not sure which of those words has the most emphasis. Lips thickened with exhaustion, he brushes another kiss to Patrick’s mouth and lets himself slump.

“Yeah. I actually do.”

*

He drives to his audition on Tuesday afternoon, sticky-palmed and cotton-mouthed. He’s heard rumors about who they’ll cast as Iron Man, names like Zac Efron and Dominic Cooper tossed around like party favors, but it’s nothing concrete yet, whispers travelling grapevines like high school games of kiss chase.

He texts Patrick: _i cant do this. im not very good x_

Patrick replies, words on a screen tapped out a continent away in a TV studio in New York: _Yes you can! You’re incredible! Give me something to celebrate when I get home babe x_

He reads and he thinks it goes okay, standing across the room from some casting director with the kind of fixed smile that seems stamped into unmalleable material. She cocks her head when they’re done and talks quietly with the others for a moment. She asks him to turn to a different page.

She wants him to read Rhodes.

Rhodes is not a bit part. Rhodes is a sidekick; a solid role with guaranteed feature time in each episode. He closes his eyes for a second, breathes deep and lets the role settle over him. He reads, barely glancing at the script, parrying lines back and forth like lawn tennis. He reads and it feels good, like he’s done everything right.

They tell him they’ll be in touch. Dizzy with euphoria, he actually thinks they might be.

He hasn’t made it onto the freeway ramp before his handsfree blows up.

Joe’s voice is quiet, like he can’t quite believe what he’s saying, “You got it, dude. Holy shit, you — you’re fucking _Rhodes_!”

*

So, consider this.

Patrick is electrified, pulsed sharp and blinded by each and every brush of Pete’s hand. This has crossed boundaries from lust. Hell, this has left that point behind, sailed international waters and set new borders. This is a high he can’t come down from, this is unshakeable, this is something fizzing in the base of his skull every time Pete touches him, smiles at him, fucking _texts_ him.

There are no friends to talk this through with. He’s never really made any in this, his _better_ life, beyond superficial acquaintances and people paid to take care of him. He didn’t keep any of the old ones from high school and garage bands. He’s almost sure this is beyond the job description of either Andy or Travie. Google provides very little in the way of useful, tangible information though there _are_ some interesting hypotheses on Yahoo! answers. He thinks about calling his mom.

(Almost laughable — he’s avoided her calls for months. There are too many things she might have seen in the pages of National Enquirer, too many things she might guess. Patrick is not a man that receives criticism — or sympathy — graciously. It’s a character flaw he has no intention of working on.)

The upshot is, if he’s not in love yet, he’s agonizingly close. This was _not_ supposed to happen, this was supposed to be a mutually beneficial situation engineered by Patrick to keep his name in the right part of the gossip magazines. Instead he’s melting up like summer day ice cream whenever Pete slings an arm around him and plants a kiss on the top of his head.

And yeah, sure, cutting ozone trails on snow white lines in the bathroom before Pete fucks him up against the floor to ceiling windows of his bedroom? That’s _great_. There are bruises on Patrick’s spine he can’t account for and a bone-deep ache through his thighs most mornings that makes him wince around the blood-gorged flush of his morning wood. But, honestly? That’s not the thing that drives him to stutter a mouthful of syllables as they roam the Farmers Market, Sunday sunlight sparkling against stalls like sails on surf.

“You should come with me,” Patrick says, hypnotized by the way Pete’s Guns N Roses shirt pulls taut across his shoulders. There are marks there, Patrick knows because he left them, caught under fabric and hidden from view, Bordeaux trails against golden skin that fit to the shape of his fingernails. Pete looks an understated kind of edible; the shirt is vintage, the ripped jeans Versace, the sneakers picked up from some exclusive supplier of out of stock, out of hope limited editions. “To Europe.”

Pete doesn’t say anything. This is less encouraging than Patrick imagined it might be but, undeterred, he presses on bravely, “It’s only like, a couple weeks and you don’t start filming until, uh — was it four weeks or five? Anyway, I’ll have, uh, press to run and whatnot but you could hang out at the hotel and we could like, sightsee and stuff. It might — I just thought it might be, you know, fun?”

Brow drawn into a frown as he considers a selection of hard cheeses like the mysteries of life, love and the known universe are contained within, Pete purses his lips. “Maybe.”

That’s not exactly the response Patrick was hoping for. Fumbling somewhere close to the edge of rejection, he shrugs, sunglasses adjusted on the sweat-slippery bridge of his nose and hands tucked down into his pockets. Funny, when he rehearsed this in his head, the imagined _no_ didn’t sting quite this sharply.

“That’s not really an answer,” he prompts, “have you ever been to London? Paris? Rome? It’s really cool, they have a ton of like, historical bullshit,” Pete looks unconvinced, much like any guy might look when his boyfriend tries to tempt him with _museums_ , “and there’s this — look, it’s fun, okay? And the hotels, oh man, the _hotels_ , they’re—”

“Come on,” Pete shifts, back to the wall and hand drawn to his hair, cheeks pink and flushed as he stares at his shoes, “It sounds _great_ but you know I can’t afford it. Maybe when I’m getting paid for Iron Man. I mean, I guess I’ll be filming then, but right now? I can’t justify that kind of money. Thanks for the invite, though, that’s sweet.”

Patrick blinks behind the relative privacy of his sunglasses, thumbs tucked into his belt loops. “You’re cute. You know I’m paying, right?” Pete looks as though he might object so Patrick loads the air between them with babbled justification. “I mean, _technically_ , I guess Island is paying and really, in the grand scheme of a fucking _tour_ , how much do you suppose one extra ass on one more seat is going to cost? Plus, you — you seem have this really great knack for keeping me out of trouble. Andy, uh, he’s my manager, he thinks you’re pretty much the best thing to happen to me since — well, since _ever_ , really. So… please? It’d be like, a _ton_ more awesome if you were there.”

Patrick has come a long way from referring to time spent together as _favors._

“I don’t know,” Pete draws out the last syllable like he’s thinking about it, the tiny smile tugging tight at the corners of his lips like Patrick has already won, “I don’t want to be a bother.”

“Come on,” Patrick sidles closer, smoothing into Pete’s personal space until they’re tangled, thumbs caught in belt loops and lips brushing stubble and sweat, “For me?” He drops his voice, singsongs into the shell of Pete’s ear, “I’ll let you do that thing you love when we get back to my place…”

Pete’s grin is Cheshire Cat wide, Crest-ad bright and folding creases at the corner of honey-gold eyes. He traces a hand up Patrick’s spine, fingertips skittering ticklish trails from coccyx to shoulders and back again. He pauses, a hair’s width from the point Patrick’s ass flares out, hand splayed and scorching heat into the small of his back, lips scented sweet with hazelnut gelato as he whispers, “And what’s that?”

Patrick hesitates, heart hammering as-yet-unrecorded rhythms into his ribs. This is a declaration dressed in throwaway flirtation like a cheap costume. He thinks he sees a camera from the corner of his eye, another paparazzo printing paychecks onto digital memory cards. Patrick makes it good, tilts up his chin and angles Pete so his best side is presented as he leans in, pausing in the split second before their lips brush to whisper.

“Me.”

Pete laughs around the shape of Patrick’s mouth, ice cream kisses coated in something suspiciously more than lust. Is seven weeks too soon to feel this way? This _is_ Hollywood after all, La-La-Land, a hyper-exposed fast-forward where it’s not unusual to be married, divorced and limping wounded through a custody battle within a couple of years. At least Pete can’t knock him up, although Patrick is starting to stare wistfully at those cool gay couples that walk barefoot along the Malibu shoreline with a cute, designer dog shaking saltwater over their cute, designer shorts.

So, consider this.

Today he’s sober, no traces of chemicals caught in his bloodstream, no bullet-blown high patching synthetic samples over the melody of his mind. Does that make this real or a side-effect of the comedown? Falling in love feels no-parachute sorts of terrifying, the ground rushing up too hard and too fast. If love is intangible, hypothetical, subjective and experienced on a uniquely individual basis, how can Patrick ever truly know if that’s the way he’s feeling?

But then, realistically, how can he know that it’s not?

*

“So, what you’re saying is, you’re blowing off your own leaving party?”

Across the catering table, Gabe’s face is a carefully arranged mask of irritation placed over disappointment. They’re snatching lunch between sets; sushi rolls on paper plates and bottles of sparkling water breaking up the monotony of over-acted, under-written bullshit. Gabe — the infamous Ben, the other half to Pete’s social media catastrophe of a career move — is not a happy man.

Look, it’s not that Pete intended things to work out this way, it’s not like he’s some kind of arrogant, Hollywood asshole casting aside offers like last season’s clothes as something better rolls in. He needs this vacation, time to decompress and readdress and all of that therapist-worthy idiocy rattling around his head like uncoated pills.

“Don’t say it like that —”

Gabe snorts, sharp and ugly, “So how _should_ I say it? You’ve been here _five years_ , man, you get yourself a new role, some new clothes and then you run out on us? That’s fucked up.”

The truth of it stings, somewhere between the Gucci shirt, too casual to justify to price tag, and limited-edition Air Jordans, a style the tabloids have branded _Hot Topic couture_. Pete is burning a hole in his nest egg to keep up with Patrick, a plane ticket and hotel room barely a fraction of what he’s dropped on shit to wear while he’s out there. But the thing is, they’re photographed everywhere they go, new snaps appearing in different gossip columns every time they’re seen together. No longer _Pete_ but _Patrick Stump’s latest boyfriend_. (He resents the _“latest_ , _”_ the implication that another pretty-faced, empty-headed no-name will appear within a week.) He can’t be the loser, the one they turn into a joke. This is why he’s visiting the hair salon every two weeks, the reason his stubble is cultivated, groomed and maintained to within a fraction of an inch, why he’s pasting on moisturizer, toner, and African salt scrub that promises to make him ten years younger every day. It’s exhausting. It’s _expensive_.

Pete sighs and rubs the heels of his hands into burnt-dry eyes. “Okay, I get it, the timing isn’t great. But Patrick asked me along and it’s not like he can arrange a whole fucking tour around one shitty little party.”

He realizes the moment the words trip from his lips that he’s said the wrong thing. But words don’t come with the ability to pause and rewind, to go for a second take and he winces, staring down at the table top as Gabe’s hurt disbelief hangs in the air around them.

“Wait, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I get it,” says Gabe, in a tone that suggests he really _doesn’t_. “You’re getting laid, getting gifts, getting flown around the fucking world.”

“Come on, man,” Pete didn’t mean it like that, it’s not _like_ that. He’s conciliatory, head tilted, hands splayed as he tosses out apologies without saying sorry. “We can do the party when I get back, maybe Patrick can come along, it’d be nice for you guys to meet him, I think you’d really like him if you just—”

“Oh, now we’re good enough for that fucked up, twinky little junkie—”

“Hey,” Pete’s water bottle crashes to the table, plastic forks rattling against plastic-coated MDF, “ _don’t_ fucking talk about him like that. Are you _jealous_? Is that it?”

Gabe sneers, twisted and ugly, as he pushes to his feet, looming over the table and casting Pete in shadow as he leans down and hisses through his teeth. “Jealous? I don’t fucking _think_ so. He’s a fucking loser and he’s going to drag you down with him. Hey, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, asshole.”

Pete is shouting smack at Gabe’s back, calling insults at nothing more than a middle finger raised over a retreating shoulder. “Yeah? Well, fuck you, too. I don’t _need_ this shit anymore. I don’t need Guilty fucking Pleasure and I don’t need _you_.”

Europe, Iron Man, Patrick.

Pete has the world.

*

LAX to Heathrow. Eleven hours of circulated air burning his throat raw around the burst of champagne bubbles against his tongue. Long haul flights — stiff joints and muscles aching sore — are Patrick’s least favorite thing. He wonders when the label will give in and arrange a private jet for more than domestic runs between awkward-to-accommodate domestic tour dates.

He’s aware that this makes him sound like a diva and keeps his observations, along with all outward verbal communication beyond muted grunts, to himself.

Jittered with jet lag and lack of pharmaceuticals, he collapses to the bed in the royal penthouse at the Corinthia, carry-on bag abandoned in the lounge and case caught somewhere between customs and concierge. He waits for the bed to sink under Pete’s weight, for the press of a warm mouth to the back of his neck, inquisitive hands under the hem of his shirt. Then he’ll roll over and let Pete ease down the painted-on jeans he was vain enough to wear on a transatlantic flight. He’ll risk deep vein thrombosis before he’ll risk facing photographers in sweats and a hoodie. Then —

“This room is amazing,” says Pete, it tastes weird to Patrick, like he’s looking for something to say. “I’m pretty sure I could fit my whole house in here.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Patrick snaps into the pillow, “I’ve never been invited.”

“I—” Pete is shrugging helplessly, Patrick can hear it, “—I didn’t realize you wanted to see it. It’s boring.”

That shouldn’t sting. It’s been less than two months and he’s not sure, in the context of a budding relationship with a man that lives in the fucking _valley_ for Christ’s sake, if he should even care. But he _does_ care. He cares because Pete has met everyone that knows anything about him — Charlie, Travie, Andy, fuck, is that all he’s _got_? — and given back nothing in return.

It’s not that he’s shocked that Pete is ashamed of him, the coked up pop star with a reputation for falling out of clubs. But it still hurts.

He doesn’t want to sound like a bitch but somehow, he does anyway. “Whatever.”

“I’m gonna take a shower real quick,” Pete is rummaging in his bag like the hotel won’t have shampoo, “you want to join me?” Patrick shakes his head into the pillow; he wants the sunset beyond the windows to bleed through him, a chemical buzz vibrant in his veins but there’s no sign of Travie and Patrick’s carefully procured synthetic personality. Pete clearly wants the boyfriend who sparkles and charms but he’s missing in action — somewhere between a car in Los Angeles and the elevator shaft of another hotel. Pete continues, disappointed, “Alright, suit yourself.”

Silence falls with the muted thump of the bathroom door. There’s a haze on the room like a dream, blinking in and out of lucidity with each unfocused twitch of Patrick’s eyelids. The rooftops roll beyond the windows, pulsing static through Patrick’s system until he’s sure he’ll buzz straight through the mattress.

The concierge arrives but not Travie, no wraps and baggies neatly ordered and placed into his washbag. Patrick doesn’t have much, but he has his official medication in neat, orange bottles bearing his name and buried at the bottom of his case. Pills for ADD, for anxiety, something to help him sleep. It’s all the same, scratch the surface and it’s identical amphetamines, barbiturates and narcotics written up on neat prescription slips. He slips out a couple of Ritalin for the jet lag and closes his eyes, swallowing dry and feeling them trace through his system like vascular coloration.

He needs it to kick in.

By the time the shower shuts off, Patrick is down to his underwear, pinched pink marks carved into the softer skin of his hips and thighs by unyielding denim. He’s also two glasses into a bottle of red from the mini bar. Maybe three glasses. Does it matter? He feels like it probably did at some point, to another Patrick, but not this one. This one is beyond reproach, chemical compounds burning in his bloodstream and the promise of an arena of screaming voices urging him along.

Pete’s arrival by the bed is heralded by copper skin traced with ink — good decisions and bad — a cloud of steam scented with cedarwood and Axe deodorant. He fills Patrick’s line of vision, dripping diamonds that glitter his skin, that catch in chest hair and the dark line dipping into the towel around his waist. Patrick wants to follow each one like an electric maze game, to trace the loop and flow of them with fingers, lips, tongue. The suggestion of Pete’s cock beneath the cotton seems half-hard and his eyes entirely interested. God, but Patrick _burns_ when Pete looks at him that way.

Patrick spreads his legs and lets the damp, pink head of his cock slip above the waistband of his boxer briefs, eyebrows raised and hands tucked behind his head. The groan from Pete’s chest is resonant, the towel around his shoulders snatched up to rub at his hair.

“Fuck, look at you,” Pete whispers around the snag of his lower lip between his teeth, towel unhitched from narrow hips. His eyes glitter gold in muted hotel lamplight as his cock swells, curves up to greet the tattoo low on his belly. The look he rakes over Patrick’s body is hungry. It is _starving_. “God, the things I want to do to you…”

Eyes closed and smiling, Patrick says, “So _tell_ me, _do_ them, go ahead…” and then, when Pete moves closer, “No, wait, hold that thought. Look,” he gestures out of the window, heart scratchedCDskipping, London is black and gold beneath them, beckoning and begging and calling for discovery, “I want...”

He’s at the window in a moment, fingertips pressed to the tastefully tinted privacy glass. He could scoop up the city in his palm, he’s sure of it. Pete moves behind him, warm, damp front molded to Patrick’s back as he hooks his stubble-sharp chin to Patrick’s shoulder. Pete bites at his earlobe and Patrick shivers on the warmth of his breath. “What do you want, babe?”

He needs to walk, needs to feel crushed on crowded sidewalks and breathe the smoke-infused city air, taste the Atlantic, or something close to it, from the other side of the world. They’ve lost eight hours of life to time zones and Patrick is vibrating out of his skin with a need to reclaim them.

“That,” he whispers at the fluorescent glow of street signs and hoardings, at the two-tone trails of red and white car lights lining the bridge beneath them, at the river that bleeds into the ocean that bleeds into America. “ _That._ I want the city with us in it, not over it, down _there_ , like we’re… like we’re the sidewalk, not the stars, you know?”

“For you,” Pete murmurs, voice tight with something Patrick can’t pinpoint. Pete pivots him, pushes him back to the glass that feels like home, molds their lips together and says around the twist of their tongues. “Anything you want. Anything at all.”

Travie arrives, smiling distantly and herding Patrick somewhere Pete — scrabbling for his towel and blazing crimson like Travie notices or cares that he’s naked and half hard — can’t hear them talk.

“I’ve got your stuff,” he mutters, coffee eyes wide as Patrick shakes his head. “You — I mean — you don’t want—”

“Don’t _need_ ,” Patrick clarifies, stuffing the washbag into the bathroom cabinet. “I can _do_ this, Trav, swear to God…” It feels like the truth, the world at his feet and waiting to be conquered as he buzzes quietly on some kind of jet lag induced euphoria. “I’m fucking _done_ with that shit.”

Because he’s a killjoy, Travie says, “I feel like I ought to call Andy. Going cold turkey can’t — that can’t be a good idea.”

“You don’t like me when I’m high,” Patrick points out, reasonably irritated at this stubborn show of unreasonableness; is he _that_ likely to fail? “You don’t want me to be clean. I’m getting some confusingly mixed signals.” A thought occurs to him. “Wait, are you — are you fucking _jealous_? Because of Pete?”

Travie sneers, tight and ugly slashed on a handsome face. “You’ve got _no idea_ how _not_ jealous I am. Have a great night, _Mister Stump_. Seriously.”

He hears, doesn’t see, Travie leave the bathroom, hears him speak to Pete and the click of the door. Pete is dressed; ripped jeans, Metallica shirt, Nike dunks and leather jacket. A James Dean for the Instagram generation. Patrick is up to his elbows in dress shirts and pressed pants, scrabbling for that one outfit, the comfort blanket he tucks away each time. Washed-soft denim, torn at the knees, and the Miles Davis shirt with a hole at the collar, a scruffy blazer and battered Converse. Pete watches him half-smiling, half-hidden in the scroll of his cellphone.

“How do I look?” he asks when he’s done. He’s hoping for anonymity, another obliviously obvious American tourist. His glasses are cutting a bruise into the bridge of his nose and the crease of his ears, unworn and unused in over a year.

Pete considers him with one eye closed and lips pursed, raises his hands with the pointer fingers and thumbs splayed at right angles, framing the shot with his tongue peeping from the corner of his lips.

“Fucking gorgeous,” he reaches for his phone once more, the camera flipped into selfie mode as he asks, “One for the road?”

So, Patrick leans into him, bleach-bright hair hidden under a hat he found buried at the bottom of his carry on. It’s a newsboy cap, something he wore daily in a different life, relegated to dress-up and play-pretend as he smiles wide for the camera and — _click_ — Pete immortalizes the moment. It’s a cute picture, he decides, assessing it closely a moment later, thumbing through the controls to send it to himself. Their smiles match like puzzle pieces; Pete’s exaggerated snarl, all white teeth next to Patrick’s half-shy smirk hidden in the cotton of Pete’s shirt.

And, okay, Patrick should find Charlie — or call him at the very least — and advise his head of security that he’s falling onto the streets of London high on gasoline-sharp summer air and dressed as a different Patrick. But he doesn’t. Instead, he shoves Pete up against the wall of the elevator, his back crushed to the bank of blinking lights that pop like flashbulbs. He presses Pete back and he kisses him, tastes the smell of leather and teenage cologne, feels the way Pete’s breath rasps from his lungs and into Patrick’s. He flirts with the flat of Pete’s tongue, warm and damp, and fires with the way it feels real instead of second-hand.

A man joins them halfway to the ground floor; Armani suit and Rolex watch. They shift apart, hands folded over belt buckles as they nod polite greetings. He catches Pete’s eye around the frame of his glasses and the illusion shatters, laughter snorting from the back of his nose. Pete’s grin is golden.

They trip from the hotel, through glass and chrome and past the doorman to stagger to the sidewalk propped on hips and hands groping for back pockets. London is genteel, leafy streets and wide walkways, suits and sleek cars moving through red-zoned congestion charges. Los Angeles is a starlet, bleached hair and fake tits. London, she’s classier, she’s a veteran leading lady, treading the boards with silver threaded through her hair. In this part of the city, at least.

Patrick blends in. He fits amongst the college students with their backpacks and accents from the far side of the Atlantic. Here, amongst the townhouses and mansion blocks, he finds a taste of anonymity. He squeezes Pete’s hand as the city sweats in mid-summer smog and wonders if they can stay right here.

Covent Garden beckons like it heard Patrick’s metaphor. Theatres and billboards and touts thrusting flyers for discount tickets. Patrick wants them all, wants to dive from show to show and let it seep under his skin and lift away some of the itch. There’s the bitter burn of a craving clawing through his throat until he’s sure he’ll choke on it. Pete holds his hand, strokes a thumb along the line of his jaw and smiles. The world is blurring around them as he fumbles for a breath.

Everything is high but not as high as Chicago, the skyscrapers spaced but the buildings claustrophobic. They tower, grey and grand and knowing, reaching up above them, church-like, doming, crushing. Patrick needs to breathe.

Oxford Street, Regent Street, buildings standing testament to capitalism. Store fronts and crowds that push, press, pull. Patrick could do with something to take the edge off, to pull his heart rate down from where it lingers on the blurred edge of a panic attack. Pete sweeps him into Hamley’s and spends twenty minutes debating the relative merits of Harry Potter wands versus lightsabers. They duel like kids in the elevator. Patrick buys Pete a bear dressed as a beefeater that he tucks into the front of his jacket.

Lip bitten and hand curled in Pete’s, Patrick pullspushespresses his way through the crowds. Color, so much color, it streaks like an acid trip and burns his retinas. The city is climbing up up up around them. Los Angeles sprawls, settling out across the coast line, low level and lax. London towers, monuments erected to products at Piccadilly Circus. Pete stares, wide-eyed and silent, eyes shifting shade under the neon glow of it.

There is so much to this city, so much beauty contained in urban edges and fluorescent pixels. They hustle and shove one another, biting kisses in doorways and framing the night in snapshots caught on cell phones.

(Patrick’s rings. It rings and it rings with a march of names across the interface that he doesn’t want to speak to. Travie. Charlie. Andy. More and more, an unrecognizable blur of letters and faces that fade into one long compression of the end call button.)

Did they walk this street already? Has that sign illuminated the hallowed curve of Pete’s cheekbones once before? Did Patrick trip on that curbstone ten minutes ago? Are they still in the West End or have they left it behind? It matters as much as the number of glasses of wine sunk in the hotel room, as much as the neat little medical bags labeled and tucked into a leather wash bag in a hotel a light year from where they stand now. That is to say: it doesn’t matter at all.

Eating crepes stuffed with Nutella and strawberries, they walk Soho, past gay bars throbbing with house music that makes Patrick want to dance, past touts pressing fliers and past adult bookstores staffed by smiling boys and girls. He can pretend, converse scuffing concrete and Pete’s arm around his shoulders, that this is normal. That _he’s_ normal. Pete feeds him a bite of his crepe, saltsweat under sugarsweet and Patrick wonders if he’s falling in —

He tugs Pete into a porn shop because, at this stage, why the fuck not? He’s doing this without that where _this_ is living and Pete and _that_ is coke and dependency. He’s _doing_ it and it’s… golden.

“This is _not_ a real bookstore,” Pete grins, thumb trailing along the spines of a hundred different pornographic comic books. “This is a bookstore in name only.”

Patrick shrugs, bites a smile around his lip. “They’re putting the graphic in graphic novel, when you think about it.”

Patrick can think about nothing but the way his blood itches under his skin, a pathogen crawling through his nervous system as he eyes the pill bottles behind the counter. He can find a pharmaceutical for erectile dysfunction but not a way to calm the craving crashing down on the back of his skull.

Pete can be enough.

He repeats it like a chorus, humming harmonies through the cavity of his chest. He can feel his lungs expand as the lyric rearranges, torn from the page and scattered to fall at his feet.

(Can Pete be enough?)

But Pete is into it now, considering clinical displays of rubberized sex toys, fingertips trailing over handcuffs and fetish gear. He rounds a corner, eyes as wide as Christmas morning as they stumble into the lingerie, rack after rack of lace and silk.

“Oh God, can we?” he asks, halfway past hopeful as he rubs his thumb across the ribboned edge of a garter belt. “This would be so fucking hot.”

Patrick stiffens, smile tense, headache pooling through his jaw as he blinks into bright lights and wonders if the crepes are going to come back up. “Sure. You’d look _great_ in red.”

Is there acid on his tongue? Something sharp that makes Pete step back, eyebrows raised and hands defensive as he thrusts them down into his pockets.

“I didn’t mean—”

“But you did,” Patrick snaps. Pete looks kicked-puppy chastened. Patrick conciliates, “How about these?”

Handcuffs, a cock ring, a bottle of lube so big they can’t hope to use a fraction before international border control prevents them from finishing it. The clerk is laughing with them as Patrick thumbs over the cold steel of the ring and holds it to Pete’s crotch like he can measure by feel. He probably can. He tries to patch the edges of the dream together, to weave it into one as they slip down neon sidewalks assaulted by chatter in accents they don’t understand. Stores and clubs and cocktail bars flavor soundwaves with pulsing dance and throbbing European dance music that Patrick can smell, see, taste.

He finds a club that fits what he needs, G-A-Y in silver letters across a buff brick façade. Let no one say the gay scene grew on subtlety. “Come on,” he says, inhibition cast aside along with the lube, shoved into a trash can (he keeps the cock ring though, and the handcuffs, stuffed down into the pocket of his blazer), “I want to dance!”

Red velvet ropes move aside for him as an afterthought everywhere he goes. But everywhere he goes, he’s Patrick Stump: Recording Artist. Right now, he’s Patrick Stumph, the dude that barely matches the picture on his two-year-old driver’s license. He can talk though, he can make the city sing for him, and with a grin he’d like to call charming, they’re ushered inside.

“Let me buy you a drink,” Pete offers with a wink.

Patrick grins, lightheaded and silly, “Are you trying to get me _drunk_ , Mister Wentz?” The joke is definitely on Pete. Patrick is already drunk on something far more confusing than booze.

“Depends,” Pete pushes a beer into his hand – not warm, thank _God_ – and smirks, “will we go all the way if you are?”

Patrick smiles, says, “Dance with me and find out.”

On the dancefloor they sway together, Pete’s hands on Patrick’s hips, grinding his crotch lazily into his ass. They kiss, too much tongue, hidden in the dark of an alcove by the bar, Pete’s thumbs hooking into the waist of Patrick’s jeans. The taste of European beer lingers, sharp and bitter, in the crevices of Pete’s mouth. Patrick would rather they tasted of his cock.

“Mm, want to blow me in the bathroom?” he asks, only half kidding. The cock ring feels like it’s burning through his pants, like there’ll be a brand left behind like a nuclear shadow. If Pete says yes, he’ll do it.

Okay, he’s probably at least a _little_ drunk.

But, like. _Good_ drunk.

“Fuck, don’t tempt me,” Pete pushes a lock of hair out of Patrick’s eyes with a lopsided smile. Seems he isn’t drunk at all. Shame, really. “But can we save it for when we get back to the hotel…?”

The music picks up, something loud and bass-heavy pounds through the sound system. It catches the bass line of Patrick’s pulse, vibrates through the roots of his teeth and slams around his skull. They dance like they’re fucking, hips moving in time as they grind together. Patrick’s hand slides under Pete’s shirt, fingertips tracing sweat-damp skin as his mouth finds the hollow of his throat. There’s a rush through his veins like cocaine, he’s dizzied on it, twisting closer to Pete until they’re skin to skin where their shirts ride up. Pete smells of cologne and skin and the chemical stiffness of new clothes mixed with leather.

The bodies move in around them, a couple hundred more men and women moving to the music. Patrick has the unnerving sense that lives could be altering irrevocably around them. He needs something to make it feel less endless, less intense, or something that can numb him until it doesn’t matter.

It’s fun until it’s not.

Mixing drinks leaves him lightheaded, leaves his mouth flooded with coppery saliva and the sour-sharp taste of puke at the back of his tongue. It’s like their first night but different as Pete hauls him into his side. Patrick doesn’t understand for a moment until _oh_ , they’re outside in stereotypically British drizzle, the sidewalks slick-shining with it. Patrick watches the way the passing headlights bounce back against the asphalt and, hands braced to his knees as he breathes through his nose, concentrates as hard as he can on not throwing up.

“You good?” Pete asks, concern in his eyes and raindrops catching on his lashes.

Patrick blinks around the prickle of sweat slipping into his eyes, greasing the bridge of his nose and knocking his glasses askew. “I – yeah, I think I’m good.”

“Come with me,” Pete mutters, arm around his waist. His leather jacket is cool under Patrick’s cheek. He leans into him and hands over control.

They walk back through Covent Garden, past The Strand and The Savoy until they reach Victoria Embankment. The rain mists their skin, catches on their clothes and glitters diamonds in Pete’s hair. They’re flanked, hemmed in by greenery and filaments, the trees to their right and the streetlights to their left. The Thames flows by, lazy, lapping at the riverboat that doubles as a restaurant. It feels good, tranquil. Patrick doesn’t say he needs this and Pete is too polite to say he knew as much. Patrick’s phone buzzes once more. He lets it ring out.

“Thank you,” he whispers into the heat of Pete’s throat, Big Ben informing him it’s been close to 24 hours since he last took anything stronger than Ritalin. “For running away with me.”

Pete kisses him on Westminster Bridge, the Houses of Parliament casting shadows beyond them. Patrick feels sober once more.

“Now do I get to take you home?” he asks and Patrick nods, supine at Pete’s side, arms around waists and hands tucked into back pockets. “Come on, baby. Let’s go.”

_Back._

He texts the word to the numbers queued in his phone then shuts it off, locks the door behind them and follows Pete to the shower. Clothes mark their route; a t-shirt crumpled on the carpet, jeans tossed over the rail of the spiral staircase that swirls him dizzy, boxers puddled by the shower screen. Patrick is on his hands and knees, warm spray hitting his spine as Pete eases another finger inside of him.

“Fuck,” he whispers to the tile, “God, get inside of me. Now.”

“On the bed,” Pete says, wrecked and halfway to ruin, “we’re doing this my way tonight.”

So, Patrick kneels on the bed, legs spread and hands twisted back into Pete’s hair as they kiss over his shoulder. Pete’s fist is around Patrick’s cock, the flushed, red head sliding wet through the copper of his fingers, the unyielding throb of his own erection hard in the small of Patrick’s back. Patrick’s had two fingers and a slick of expensive lube. He is a collapsing vein of _want_.

He turns, throws Pete off balance and pushes him back, straddling narrow hips with solid thighs and groaning at the nails sinking crescent cuts into alabaster skin. “I’m going,” he begins, punctuation pursued with a kiss to a sweat-damp, ink-stained collarbone, “to pin you down and ride you through the fucking mattress.”

“No,” Pete’s fingers are at his hole once more, sliding slippery as he circles slowly, “my way, remember? I’m gonna—” he pushes two inside, hauls a gasp from Patrick’s too-tight lungs, “—gonna take my time with you, make it good for you. Come on, let me — let me take care of you for once. You don’t need to be this twinky little porn star every time.”

Listen, it’s not that Patrick’s like, weird about it or anything. It’s not that he desires control in each and every situation. He _is_ a perfectionist and he knows what he likes in bed the same way he knows what he likes in the studio. Right now, he wants the toofullburn of a hard cock inside of him; to demonstrate the way he can rock his hips _just right_ until that heat burns him up like thermite. But that’s not what this is about.

Unsure of what to say, he opens his mouth and blurts, “I’m not weak.”

Pete, understandably, is confused. “Excuse me?”

“Me,” Patrick clarifies, fingers wrapped around Pete’s wrist (he can feel the throb of his pulse fluttering under his hand; it’s fast, excited), “this. I’m — I let you fuck me because it’s — because it’s what _I_ like. I don’t do it because I’m, like, fucking _weak_ or something, like I need a big, strong man to take care of me. I — I don’t… I’m not trying to fucking — _impress_ you or whatever.”

There is so much more Patrick could say, so many words he could pour into the silence of an ostentatious penthouse suite with Pete pinned beneath him. Instead, he bites his lip and stares at a spot behind Pete’s left shoulder, breathing too fast, like he can choke himself on oxygen.

“I—” Pete starts, frowns, “—is this a _conversation_?” he asks, “Because I feel like, if it is, I should probably get my fingers out of your ass.”

“Can it be a _conversation_ ,” Patrick adds the same stress to the syllables around the sharp hiss of breath stolen as Pete withdraws, leaves him empty and aching, “if I don’t really know what the fuck I’m trying to say?”

Pete’s consideration is framed with a kiss, chaste against Patrick’s forehead through the fall of shower-damp hair. Patrick’s cock is still hard, it’s confusing — the parallel — lips like prom picture kisses and swollen dicks rubbing obscene between them. “Is this about the panties?”

Patrick’s tried so hard not to think about this. He kind of wishes he was high right now because this is new, this is strange, uncharted lands with the radio too loud and the thrum of bass in his blood. But it sort of _is_ about the panties so he nods, vague and compromised.

“I — I guess? I—” he breaks off and shakes his head, heels pressed into his eye sockets until his vision blurs with color around the prick of stupid tears he doesn’t want to cry, “—fuck, ignore me. I’m — I’m fucking _wrecked_ from the flight and, and—”

“Hey,” Pete’s hands are soft, gentle, fingers twined to Patrick’s as he pulls them down, “Come on, talk to me. What’s on your mind?”

“I get it,” Patrick says, but he doesn’t, not really. The truth of it is something that twists his gut and makes his vision dim at the edges. “I get why you wanted me to wear them,” Pete mutters something about it being a joke but they both know it wasn’t, “because — because taking dick is something chicks do. You’re — you’re the dude with your stubble and your fucking _tattoos_ , I’m the chick, _I get it_. But — but I’m not… They’ve always acted like taking dick is feminizing, like it makes me a woman, and like being a woman isn’t — like it’s a _bad thing_. I’m not a girl, and girls aren’t fucking weak and — and — fuck, I’m not making any sense.”

Patrick is panting, his lungs aching sore in the cavern of his chest, face pressed to the heat of Pete’s pulse. Hands trace his spine and lips find his temple, nudging kisses to salt-stained skin, sweat sharp and tingling. Patrick melts, against each and all better judgement, fingers soft in the tangle of coarse, dark hair. Pete smells of Davidoff and reassurance, Patrick rakes in a lungful and holds until it burns.

Pete sighs. “You’re not weak. You’re… honestly? You’re pretty fucking incredible.”

Lamplight spiders across the planes of Pete’s pecs, highlighting dark hair, dark ink, dark eyes cast in shadow. He glows, something ethereal and golden seeping from him as Patrick’s thumb brushes the arch of his cheekbone, the line of his jaw. Patrick would like to reiterate that he’s never been in love, not with Pete, not with the men he’s fucked before, not with the ones that left the next morning or the ones that stayed for days, weeks, months.

So, what the fuck is this?

A bead of sweat, or maybe water from the shower, works free from Pete’s hair and hits his chest, slides down over the brown bud of a nipple. The slick sound of tongue against lips echoes loud in the room as Patrick breathes deeply, closes his eyes and nods.

“Whatever you want.” He doesn’t give control easily, there’s a rush of blood in his ears, pounding against his back of his eyes as he follows the hands on his hips and lies back on the mattress. “One time only though, just for tonight.”

Pete, laughter tangled at the edges, says, “I know. Just this once.”

Apparently, what Pete wants is Patrick on his back, thighs over Pete’s shoulders and his ass on display. What Pete wants is the slippery wet slide of his spit-slick fingertips against the tight, pink pinch of Patrick’s hole. Patrick’s not opposed, on an academic level at least, to the loss of control. He curls his hands into the sheets, closes his eyes and tries not to let his heartbeat blur the edges of reality.

When Pete’s mouth touches him, when he rubs the soft fullness of his lips against the most intimate part of Patrick’s body, he sees stars. This isn’t a euphemism, some pretty lyric wrapped up in simile, this is the bright, hard edges of synthesia catching the sensation of Pete’s tongue lapping languorous against his hole and twisting it to brilliant points of spark-bright shine. Patrick can see every touch of Pete’s tongue to his skin, the way he licks up inside of him transcribed to floods of amber, gold, copper. He cries out and tastes the sound of it, sweet at the tip of his tongue.

The throb of his ignored cock, the way Pete’s mouth moves against him, the fingers that press inside of him, Patrick is made of this. When Pete urges, he lets his legs drop and arches his hips, fingering himself lazily as Pete sits back and watches, hands warm against Patrick’s thighs. There’s still a voice that whispers to him that he needs to make this good, that Pete won’t stay for his personality or for mediocre sex.

“I’d suck your dick,” he offers, lazy-soft and limp against the mattress, “but I’ve got to sing tomorrow.”

Every part of him feels boneless, post-high relaxed, aside from his dick. That throbs, hard enough to border on painful, untouched and twitching.

Pete swallows, endless eyes and contracting throat. “I can be gentle. I — I’ll be gentle.”

He is. Hand braced to the headboard, he straddles Patrick’s face, his hot, red cock pressed into Patrick’s mouth, down his throat. He shifts, one hand in Patrick’s hair, the other cupping his cheek. It’s close to tender. Patrick isn’t thinking about it.

He’s gentle but probably not enough; Patrick will rasp tomorrow then pass it off as some kind of throaty, Bob Dylan vibe. The critics will love it — they always do — and every crack of his vocals will make him think of Pete. He traces his tongue along veins and velvet, tasting salt and bitter-sharp pre-come as his hands find the round of Pete’s ass.

He sucks and watches the way Pete’s chest and shoulders flex with each thrust, the way sweat paints him golden in the light of the lamp. He wonders what Pete sees, what he thinks as he watches his cock sliding pretty into the rose flush of Patrick’s lips— and he _is_ watching, he’s watching intently. He knows he has the mouth for this, men have whispered it into his ear at after show parties since the ink dried on his first record deal. He makes it good, makes it showy, lots of tongue and taking Pete in until his lips brush the coarse hair at his groin.

Pete pulls away with a groan, cock twitching and the heel of his hand pressed hard to the base.

“I’m gonna fuck you bareback,” he whispers, knuckles grazing heat along the tight length of Patrick’s prick. Patrick hisses. He’s never been this hard before, never felt the throbbing soreness of need rolling out from his gut. He wants to press the cock ring onto Pete, cuff him to the bed and ride the aching pulse of him until they’re sticky-wet with sweat and come. Pete pauses, smiles. “If you want me to? You know it feels better that way.”

Patrick gets a medical for insurance purposes before each tour. He knows he’s clean and figures Pete probably is, too. He nods. “Yeah. But you don’t get to come inside of me, I hate that.”

“For someone who’s letting me take control,” Pete opines, slick hand coating his dick with a couple of pumps from the lube bottle, “you’re being kind of a bitch about it.”

“I don’t think I mean to be,” Patrick says, leg hooked over Pete’s hip. There’s a finger, maybe two, pressing gently at the spit-slick rim of his hole. “I think this might be who I am now.”

Pete smiles, fingers crossed as he presses inside. “Who you are is awesome.”

Patrick burns from his hips to his toes, nerve endings exposed and scraped rough-raw as he hitches his hips with gasped grunts. He hits a high note, pure and clear, as Pete leans down and sucks his cock. His hands find the mess of Pete’s hair — shower damp and fuck-trashed — pushing him down as he arches his hips. Pete pushes back, pauses to whisper against the trimmed-short curl of Patrick’s pubic hair, “You’re so fucking beautiful.” He sucks him back down.

Amber eyes skitter a look loaded with something Patrick can’t place across the pale stretch of his stomach and chest. Pete’s mouth is wet, red, stretched white at the corners, Patrick’s lungs stuttering shy as he traces the pad of his thumb across swollen lips. Pete looks good with a dick in his mouth. In Patrick’s experience, not many guys can say that.

“Fuck me,” he groans, hollow heart aching sore in the center of his chest. “Oh fuck, do it…”

Pete shifts up between Patrick’s legs once more. Yeah, okay, Patrick can admit he jolts, shockwaves shivering down his spine, as the satin-smooth length of Pete’s prick brushes up against own. Pete’s lips quirk into a grin, tucked up sweet and boyish at the corners as he whispers, “Yeah. I’ve got you, sweetheart.” Patrick’s close to certain that the endearment shouldn’t make him blush. “But you’re fucking shitty at letting me do what I want.”

Patrick smirks. “Maybe you’re fucking shitty at what you’re trying to do.”

Pete smacks his ass for that, the burn of his handprint left glowing and kicking out heat. Fuck, but Patrick loves a toppy top.

Pete opens him up slowly, too much lube and too many fingers. He slides away from Patrick’s prostate each time, smirking like he’s won something when Patrick arches up, pushes down, tries everything for friction. He tries to sneak a finger in alongside Pete’s, to touch the tingling thrum of it but Pete shoves him away. Three fingers, four — Patrick stiffens a little at that but Pete strokes his hip. “Shh, babe. You can take it.”

Turns out, he can. He rides Pete’s hand with a groan, each roll of his hips making his cock bounce between them. He’s leaking like he’s on tap, sticky-wet pre-come slicking down the angry, rigid length of his prick. He knots his fingers into the sheets and refuses to touch.

“You ready?” Pete asks, fingers withdrawn. He wipes off on the sheets and leans down, propped on an elbow but letting Patrick test his weight on his ribs and hip bones.

Patrick feels empty and deliciously sore. “Fuck you, I was ready fifteen minutes ago.”

“Diva.”

“Jerk.”

They smile, Pete’s hand at Patrick’s thigh, holding him steady to the narrow curve of his hip. The other cups his jaw and tips his head back, keeps their eyes locked as, slowly, Pete eases inside of him. He’s loose. Well, looser than he ever thought he liked, Pete’s cock sliding easily into the aching depth of him. Patrick thinks, delirious, that he might be losing his grip on reality, his nails scraping skin from the planes of Pete’s shoulders.

Yeah, Patrick could get used to this. Why have they never done _this_? They’ve fucked on every mostly horizontal surface (and a few that are entirely vertical) in Patrick’s house and yet they’ve never done _this_. He digs his fingertips into the round of Pete’s ass and presses, pushes, devours until Pete’s buried as deep as he can go.

He presses his mouth to the flutter of Pete’s pulse and breathes against salt-stained skin. “ _Fuck_.”

“You want me to start?” Pete’s trembling and fuck, Pete’s _waiting_ , like Patrick is an untouched kid in the backseat of a borrowed station wagon. Patrick doesn’t actually _remember_ much about losing his virginity — the alcohol saw to that — but he wishes for half a heartbeat that if he did, it could’ve been like this.

“Oh, God,” he hisses, knuckles scraping along the scruff of Pete’s stubble, “ _Yes_.”

Pete starts to move. He withdraws slow and easy, the un-rubberized feeling of skin-to-skin making Patrick cry out. He sets his heels into the curve of Pete’s ass cheeks, urging him in, forcing him deeper, craving the burn of being completely full. He reaches down, desperate to grapple with the length of his cock — leaking wet and sticky against the skin of their stomachs — but Pete is faster, catching his wrist and pressing it down to the mattress. “Not yet. And stop trying to control this. We can stop if you want but — let me.”

The urge is definitely there to call him a dick. But then Pete shifts his hips, slides a hand around the back of Patrick’s knee and urges it up to his chest. The angle of his cock shifts, Patrick sees stars, galaxies, unknown fucking _universes_ painting his vision with citrine and amethyst and deep, rich ruby. His throat feels raw though he’s unaware of making a noise as Pete, hips rolling slow and unrushed, fucks him into a stupor. Is this — is this why people enjoy losing control? Why they hand over the very fabric that makes them to the hands of someone else?

“Fuck,” Patrick whines, fingernails sinking into Pete’s bicep. “It’s _so_ — so _good_ …”

Pete leans down and licks over Patrick’s nipple, his mouth hot, wet, chased with the suggestion of teeth in the moment the thick-flared cap of his cock scrapes over Patrick’s prostate. Patrick convulses, spasms, probably fucking _dies_ , heart stopping for a second as he sinks his teeth into the silk-sweat of Pete’s forearm. Harder, deeper, the slow, dark pull of Pete’s cock races fire over Patrick’s skin. He’s burning, he’s suffocating, he’s begging. _Begging_.

Those copper-glow eyes seem bottomless, fixed on Patrick’s above the frame of a deeply bitten lip. Patrick never wants to stop doing this, can’t imagine a reality in which they’re _not fucking doing this._

Faster.

Hips against hips, Pete is fucking into him furiously, the _just too full_ stretch of it tingling down into Patrick’s fingers and toes. They’re numb, pins and needles, burning sensitive under touch. Pete is gasping, struggling for air as he groans. “Gotta stop. Gonna — gonna come…”

“Don’t,” Patrick pleads — goddammit, he _pleads_ — hand sliding down once more for the aching pulse of his prick. This time, Pete doesn’t stop him. “Fuck, _don’t stop_.”

Pete shakes his head, fuck-drunk. “No. No, you said—”

“ _Fuck what I said._ ” Patrick’s hand closes around his cock, his throat cracking entirely as he cries out. “Don’t you _dare_ fucking stop!”

It’s never felt like this, his hand tugging sharply as Pete ruts into him in time. His mouth is watering, flooded, his head spun and his vision blurring as his skin races with electric sensation. This is how it feels to be struck by lightning.

He thinks — though he can’t be certain — that they come together. He thinks the streaks of his thick, bitter-salt pearl stripe their chests and stomachs in the same moment that Pete presses in, deep and hard and oh so fucking _full_ , and comes inside of him.

What he _does_ know is that he can’t breathe, that his lungs have frozen along with his nervous system as every neuron flares up in response. For that second, Patrick is a pathway of nerve endings, misfiring colored markers into his bloodstream as his cock throbs in his hand, as he thumbs over the tip until he’s shuddering and whimpering and curled up into Pete.

Pete collapses to him slowly, the fall of a condemned building, lowering himself by degrees until they’re pressed together, flushed hot and sticky. They don’t move. Patrick’s not sure he can. Wetness — lube and come — slicks down between his cheeks and pools under his ass, thick and sticky.

Pete kisses Patrick’s throat, his jaw, his lips and murmurs, “I thought you didn’t want me to come in your ass?” It’s not the most romantic declaration, but Patrick will take it.

“I changed my mind,” Patrick whispers, tongue and lips still kind of numb. “Thanks for asking though.”

“Be pretty fucking violating if I didn’t,” says Pete; the only honorable man in showbusiness.

Patrick is thinking about men he doesn’t really want to think about as he shrugs. “Still. Thanks.”

They shift and Pete slides out of him, both groaning at the loss of sensation. It’s strange not to move apart, not to deal with the condom. Patrick’s not sure how he feels about it. As he traces his thumb along the ink at Pete’s collarbone, Pete pushes his fingers through salon-blond hair.

“Honestly?” he whispers into the dark. “Do you think I’m too much of a bitch? I can handle the truth.”

“You’re kind of bitchy, yeah. Sort of suits you, though.”

Patrick will take that. He whispers, “I wasn’t — I didn’t used to be like this.” And, because he’s sober, because he’s half-convinced he can do this, he makes a confession he never has before. “It’s — it’s the coke that makes me this way, you know.”

“So,” Pete draws it out, makes it almost a question as he touches Patrick’s cheek, “how were you before?”

Patrick laughs, hollow-sore and crooked. “I was worse. I was — fucking _dull_ , I guess. This fat kid with shitty hats and… I used to get stage fright, total anxiety attacks, which is — well, it’s _stupid_ as hell when you’re a fucking _singer_.”

“How’d it start?” he asks, eye glowing ancient in the lamplight. He’s beautiful; more than Patrick deserves in this and any other possible universe.

“The same fucking cliché it always is,” he shrugs around another dead-end laugh. “Someone said I should try weed before a show, to take the edge off the anxiety. God, the set’s still on YouTube somewhere; me… totally fucking blazed and trying to sing Grand Theft Autumn. Where is your boy tonight? I didn’t know where _I_ fucking was, never mind anyone else. Funny, though.”

Pete doesn’t look like he thinks it is and, Patrick thinks, that’s not right. He’s not fishing for pity, he doesn’t _want_ sympathy in this or any other form. Pete asked, he’s answering, it doesn’t need to be any more than that.

“So, yeah.” It seems easy to distance himself from it now he’s made the decision that it’s over. “Turns out those PSAs they made us watch in school were true, weed really _is_ a gateway drug. Who fucking knew, huh? I tried pills, liked ’em. Tried coke, _loved_ it. So, here we are. You know what the _best_ thing about coke is?” Pete shakes his head. “It makes me everything I always wanted to be; I — I’m confident, I’m _funny_ , I’m not fat anymore.”

He still can’t bring himself to say ‘thin’. Mostly because he still doesn’t quite believe it, waiting for the punchline to the joke every time he slips something off the hanger in wardrobe and has to call out for a smaller size. The weed did the opposite, made him hungry all the time, made him bigger, which made him more anxious, which fed the cycle of spiraling depression and self-loathing. Coke isn’t — _wasn’t_ , he reminds himself, he’s _quit_ — like that.

“But — but I’m done with it. For you. You ready to meet fat Patrick? Fucking — Fatrick.”

Pete shakes his head and traces his thumb lightly along the curve of Patrick’s lower lip. “Don’t do it for me, that’s not how this works. And you know I sort of — I like you anyway, right? This set dressing,” he touches Patrick’s hair, his ribs, “it’s not the reason I’m here.”

Patrick nods although he doesn’t believe it. Would Pete have said yes to the chubby kid compensating for the thick, soft hang of bloated stomach with brightly colored shoes? Somehow, Patrick doubts it.

Pete pauses, head cocked. There’s a hollow beneath his shoulder blade as he stretches, weight braced on his hands either side of Patrick’s head. Patrick’s fingers dip into it, follow the flow of ribs and skin and ink he could draw with his eyes closed. It’s been ten weeks since the party but it feels like longer. In a good way, though. “I think…”

Patrick cocks his head, legs spread and the come-slippery tip of Pete’s fingers against his fucked-out hole. He says, “What? What do you think?”

For a moment, Pete doesn’t reply, instead he rubs his fingers along the crease of Patrick’s ass, slicking come and lube against his skin until he’s sticky-wet and lying in a damp patch. It’s weird. Possessive, needy, kind of gross. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

“I think I’m falling in love with you,” Pete whispers, his eyes hesitantly hopeful.

Patrick doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t move much at all beyond the flutter of his fingertips in the small of Pete’s back. This is… well, it’s kind of important. Pete seems half a beat from babbling apologies as Patrick kisses him, lips brushed to the sweat-tacky stretch of his forehead.

And Patrick, he’s glad he’s sober as he replies, “Yeah. I think I love you, too.”

It’s conditional, they’ve given themselves an out. But Patrick feels it in the way Pete kisses him, in the way his tongue sweeps into Patrick’s mouth like he can get high on the taste. So, they kiss, tangled too hot under high thread count sheets, soaring over the city.

Pete falls asleep fast, cast in the colors that bleed through the window from the city beyond, knocked half-dumb and drooping on jet lag and dopamine. Pete curls around him, skin sticky where they touch, possessive in a way Patrick never thought he liked.

Buzzed bright and caffeinated, Patrick closes his eyes and counts his breaths. He shifts, punches the pillow into shape and finds a cool spot. He counts lit windows in the building opposite until his vision blurs and the migraine shifts from the base of his skull to his temples.

Patrick can’t sleep.

It itches through his system, a fuzzed ache spinning him dizzy. The glow is leaking from the room, from Patrick’s bloodstream, begging to be replaced with chemical compounds that spread through his veins and leave him hazy. He slips from under Pete’s arm, out of the bed and into the bathroom, pulls out the washbag and, by the streaked purple light coming in through the window, considers his options.

The thing is, it’s easy enough to pretend for an hour, a day, that he’s normal. He can make-believe that he’s functioning when really, he’s just between fixes. His reflection stares back, ghostly, hollow-eyed in the mirror.

The thing is, Patrick’s always been pretty sure he’s not addicted, that this is a party buzz that adds sparkle to the flatness. That’s what he told the therapist he used to see — the one who used buzzwords like _addictive personality_ and _compulsive risk taker_ — right before he fired her. But Pete inside of him, hands on his body, sparking shockwaves? That felt real. So, why isn’t it enough? He thumbs a downer out of a baggie, pastel pills promising Benzo-flavored relief. His hand hovers over the drain. He could drop it.

The thing is, he decides, around a mouthful of water sucked straight from the faucet, easing the acid burn of an uncoated pill down his throat, this is his reality. He considers himself in the mirror and, not for the first time, dislikes what looks back. He stands on the balcony and watches the city, waiting for it to kick in. He was right all along and it’s difficult to take pleasure in the inevitability of it.

The thing is, Pete should have stayed away.

*

The opening bars of Explode throb through the speakers, shuddering through the dust of the floorboards and into the soles of Patrick’s feet. It picks up the tick of his pulse and alters it, chemicals burning through his bloodstream as he bounces on his toes behind the stage. The house lights shutter-stop, camera flashes in neon colors that pick out the blur and shape of the faces he can’t see without glasses or contact lenses.

The stage itself is dark, eerily so, a path to the mic stand picked out in stud lights and UV. The loop and pulse of synthesizers is extended far beyond the album version, enough to build anticipation, to lift the crowd higher and higher until they’re floating on sweat and desperation. Wembley Arena screams for him like a lover, his lover whispers to him like a sonnet.

“Love you.” Pete’s mouth barely touches his, the ghost of a kiss, the shadow of a touch.

Patrick grins, shoulders his guitar and gasps a little at the throb of soreness in his ass. He’s going to feel Pete’s cock with every rock of his hips up on stage. The thought shivers tingles down his spine, spooling low in his gut. He steps out, suit jacket already wet with sweat under his arms and into the small of his back, his crisp, white shirt slicking translucent to his skin. He approaches center stage in the darkness and feels the arena take a breath.

The music cuts, a single spotlight illuminating him as he murmurs into the microphone, eyes down, a spectrum of shadow and light in _just_ the way the stage manager envisaged it. His voice is low, a caress on shimmer-bright sound waves, reflected and amplified through every speaker, a dip and flow of colored lights on the soundboard.

“Why, hello there, London. How’re you feeling?”

The crowd erupts with the stage lights, with the riotous explosion of song, color, sound. Patrick is soaring.


	3. Take my hand and jump, I'm almost certain we can fly

Life shifts, unrecognizable, the pop of flashbulbs heralding new starts as summer slips by. The studio is trading on the promise of _‘Iron Man, coming to Showtime in Fall 2012’_ , chasing sunlight and wide-angle action shots through sets and on-location, big-budget sequences.

Pete splits his time between the uncomfortable shape of his own Ikea bed frame in Burbank and the elegant sprawl of Patrick’s palace of glass and chrome up in the Hills. This is dictated by their schedules, a relationship lived around the itineraries saved on a dozen different MacBooks across record labels and TV studios. They sync ‘ _I love you_ ’ around time zones and trade Sunday morning blowjobs in bed for mutual masturbation over Skype.

They’re not living together, not officially anyway, but Pete’s forgotten what it was to be anything other than what he is now. The Guilty Pleasure leaving party was never rescheduled. Pete’s not sure when he last spoke to a friend that wasn’t Joe.

Burbank feels too small for him now, a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit but jammed into place by eager hands. He itches to leave from the moment he pulls up outside until the second he climbs into a teamster’s car to make another 6am set call. Joe is his agent now, aggressively brilliant at chasing all of the best possible riders and quotes for any and all projects that spring up now Pete’s name is new and exciting once more.

There are rumors mounting about something huge, an A List project with Pete’s name on it. He’s giddied when he thinks about what it could be, what it might mean.

But he misses Patrick fiercely, aches for him in a bed that feels like a cheap suit, longing for Egyptian cotton and Patrick’s skin under his lips. “The tour’s over soon,” Patrick assures him, that little clench of pride in Pete’s gut that his baby is killing it, that the five-in-a-row number one dream is now a reality. “Then I’m all yours until New Year’s.”

Their time together is recorded in hours now, flying visits measured in lines; scripts, states, time, coke. It’s all the same. Patrick doesn’t hide it from him anymore, he gave up on going clean almost as soon as he started. Now he’s snorting snow-white powder from the nightstand in a way that lookspretty to Pete, his pupils deep and dark as he stretches out on the sheets and demands to be fucked until he aches.

It’s okay, though. It’s showbiz, right?

Lights! Camera! Action!

“Okay, that’s a wrap for now, guys. Break for lunch.”

Pete swears he senses him before he sees him, that back of the neck prickle that stands the fine hair on end and has him raking a greedy glance amongst the banks of cameras, lights and rigging. He sees him, lounging against the wall, wearing a blazer over a striped t-shirt and skinny jeans, a cashmere scarf around his neck as though it’s fall in Chicago rather than Los Angeles. He smiles, thick, soft lower lip perfectly balanced by the designer shades on the bridge of his nose.

On set somewhere between Pete’s next call and Patrick’s next press conference, they consider one another. Pete is in Air Force blues, hair slicked back and down and styled to look conservative. Patrick is in tailored Dolce and Gabbana, hair freshly bleached and styled. Pete has the strangest sense that they’re not PeteandPatrick but actors on a stage, working from a script under set lights and the watchful eye of director and continuity. It’s bizarre, confusingly caught somewhere between illusion and reality, the exhaustion painted away with expensively applied makeup.

“Hey,” says Pete, suddenly breathless and shy. Patrick looks good, the sunglasses drawing attention to his cheekbones, to the knowing curve of his smirk. He’s lost a little more weight, the softness above his waistband gone entirely. Pete wonders if he’s eating properly. “When did you get in? I thought you had another week?”

“I juggled a few things,” Patrick grins and then promptly changes the subject, “You’re hot when you’re Rhodes. So fucking sexy. Are you gonna take me for lunch?”

This isn’t the issue it once was. Pete might not have Patrick’s cashflow but Joe negotiated a solid quote. He’s doing okay. Better than okay. Money isn’t the reason he shakes his head. “We’ll grab something from catering. Come on, I’ll show you my trailer.”

They walk in silence, not touching. There’s a sign with Pete’s name on it tacked to the door of his trailer, the top step creaking as they step inside.

“I’ve missed you, babe,” Patrick sighs over the frames of his aviators, swirling black-no-sugar in a Dinosaur Coffee paper cup as he stands against the wall. “When do you get off set?”

Pete looks at his watch, grimaces. “Eight? Maybe eight-thirty?”

It’s unsettling, standing six feet apart. Pete’s skin prickles with the heat he swears he can feel kicking from Patrick’s body. So, he moves closer, sweeps off the sunglasses and props them into platinum blond bangs. Patrick’s skin is warm, smooth under the cup of his palms, the taste of his tongue achingly familiar as their mouths meet. Pete’s dreamt of that thick lower lip, felt the give of it plush under his tongue in his sleep, woken up wet with come like a teenager at the thought of it dragging slowly over the aching length of his cock.

Patrick hums against his lips. “Mmm, nice. So, I’m playing the El Rey tonight, some label showcase _thing_ , now the album’s gone gold...” he trails off as Pete’s teeth graze over his Adam’s apple, “oh _c’mon_ , no marks, I — I’ve got press to run. Hey! Are you even listening to me?”

“The El Rey,” Pete murmurs, half hard cock chafing sore in his dress pants. “Label thing. God, you smell good.”

“I’ve put you on the guest list, obvious— _ah_!” Patrick trails off to gasp as Pete works a hand into his pants, fingers closing dry around the soft warmth of his cock. “Fuck, you’re obnoxious when you’re horny. Pay attention, shithead!”

“The El Rey,” Pete repeats, heart pulsing dirty in his chest as he walks Patrick backwards to the couch. “Tonight. Label thing. I’m on the guest list. I’ll be there, I promise. But…”

Patrick folds back to the couch, pale hands, hair, throat against the dark blazer, dark leather. His mouth is wet, red, swollen up from the press of Pete’s lips, his soft, pink tongue a temptation. He watches, eyebrows raised as Pete eases the lust-thick length of his cock from his pants. He laughs, low and soft, draws it out over three or four syllables. “ _But_?”

“You ever been fucked by someone in active military service?” Pete purrs, tapping the medals at his chest and snapping a salute, sticky tipped cock curving up against the pale blue of his shirt. “Lieutenant Colonel Rhodes, requesting permission to come aboard.”

“You’re disgusting, and like, I’m pretty sure that’s not an air force term,” Patrick assures him grabbing at him with eager hands. Pete sinks down to the warmth of him, loses himself in the tasteweightfeel of Patrick rolling on top of him. Patrick nips a kiss to his earlobe that shudders him senseless, eyes closed as he sinks his nails into the plush of Patrick’s hips. “But I’ve missed you.”

Hands drawn to the buckle of Patrick’s belt, Pete smiles. “Yeah. I’ve missed you too.”

*

Another Pete in another lifetime would agonize over his outfit. He would pick through the closet weighing up if this was a shirt and tie event, a button down over jeans, maybe a t-shirt of some obscure, indie rock band. That guy is a loser.

This new, confident, red carpet Pete doesn’t think twice and doesn’t feel out of place about slipping from the Mercedes in his Gucci jeans and Ramones shirt with the neck all stretched out of shape. He used to be the kid begging for attention with bright smiles and brighter shoes. That kid is dead, long-gone and buried next to anxiety and a crippling lack of self-esteem. When the cameras flash, it’s because _he_ matters now, not because they’re priming themselves for who might follow behind.

He smiles the way Patrick taught him, his hair the kind of effortless cool that takes an hour to achieve but makes him look like he just rolled out of bed. There’s a girl from hair and makeup going home late tonight, a couple fifties tucked into her purse for her trouble. No one asks for his name, security shifting aside and granting access to the hallowed space of backstage, no Triple A required.

Pete can’t pretend he doesn’t love this, this new life is entirely more fascinating, more exciting, more pulseraceglorious than anything that came before. If there’s a voice in his ear that murmurs venom about being careful what you wish for, Pete isn’t listening.

From by the bar, Andy sees him, raises his bottle of mineral water and makes his way through the crush of label suits, press and hangers on. He moves with purpose, short, careful strides like a panther. He has the look of someone willing to take no shit and dangerously close to his last thread of patience.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he demands, in lieu of something more civilized like, say, ‘hello’.

Pete is unwilling to deal with the ghost of Phil fucking Spector after twelve hours on set. “Filming, what the fuck has it got to do with you?”

“He’s refusing to go on until you get here,” Andy snaps furiously, Pete wants to know why the fuck this is his problem when, until an hour and a half ago, he was in a studio in Century City, up to his balls in a production tank of ice-cold water. “He’s been in the green room talking shit for the past twenty minutes. I’ve got Bob Mc-fucking-Lynn threatening to fire my ass, L.A. goddamn _Reid_ is here for fuck’s sake. Would you _please_ go talk to him?”

Pete has a comeback biting behind his teeth, some furious riposte reminding Andy that he’s not a fucking Crush employee and that none of this would’ve happened if someone — _anyone_ , but especially his manager — had kept a better eye on Patrick. But that’s for a time when his boyfriend isn’t, apparently, tripping balls in a dressing room. He nods, silent, follows Andy through a twisting rabbit warren of hallways and dark, grey doors.

“What the fuck did he take, jackass?” he asks, the thud-thump of their shoes echoing between the conversations of passing techs. Pete’s fury is ticking from quiet to raging, seconds from shoving Andy up against the wall. He watches the way those broad shoulders move under his suit jacket and speculates on the likelihood of coming out of it with his front teeth in place. “And why the _fuck_ weren’t you watching him?”

“How the hell should I know? He called in some guy from West Hollywood, met him at the bar. I—”

“ _Some guy_?” Pete repeats incredulously, his voice ricocheting against the breezeblocks. It echoes, on and on down the hallway, a dozen different Petes burnt bright with disbelief. If Andy’s intimidated, he doesn’t show it. Then, he doesn’t show much behind the sunglasses (indoors, at nighttime). “You let _some guy_ bring him fuck knows what? I mean — isn’t there _security_ here? Don’t they check people — _some fucking guy_ — for this shit at the door?”

Pete is certain that if he could see Andy’s eyes, they’d be tight with derision as he says, “Welcome to Hollywood, sweetheart. What the talent wants, the talent fucking _gets_. Now come on.”

They find him behind a door with a handwritten sign, his name in stark black ink against snow-white printer paper. It reminds Pete of bumps of coke against black marble countertops but in reverse, inverted, looking through a viewfinder the wrong way. Pete is expecting many things; a repeat of that first night in Avalon; Patrick curled up and sobbing in the corner of a room he doesn’t recognize; something close to a coma with dead eyes dulled dark.

What he’s not expecting is five feet four of twenty-four karat God complex. Patrick is reclining like royalty across a sagging couch in the center of the room, slugging from a bottle in his hand like it’s Perrier rather than Dom Perignon.

“Babe!” he says, and takes a long pull on the neck of the bottle. “Fuck yeah! You made it!”

“Told you I would, didn’t I?” Pete has no idea how to approach this. Patrick’s not even close to ready for the stage, still in his blazer and striped shirt, still in his aviators. He and Andy look like assholes in the shuddering glow of the overhead light. “You ready to go out there, sweetie? They’re all waiting for you…”

Patrick sighs, world weary. Pete can taste his apathy, as heady as the bitter combination of champagne and high-end vodka hazing his breath.

“Do I _have_ to? Can’t we go home?” He dips a hand to the buckle of Pete’s belt, works it into his jeans and takes hold of his cock. It feels good, still a little slick from the lube earlier, Patrick’s thumb brushing up under the head. Andy’s like, _right there_ , but Pete’s sort of used to this by now, this bizarre fishbowl existence of a life on display. An exhibit. A fucking zoo animal. “Mmm, don’t you want me, Peter?”

“I do,” he whispers, Patrick hums against his neck. Pete’s got this private theory that being fucked by Patrick while he’s high would be an ethereal experience. Transcendent. He licks Patrick’s throat, tastes salt-sweat and sour hairspray. “So how about you get up on the stage and do a few numbers, come back here and show me what you’ve got?”

“Nah,” Patrick shakes his head, swiping back and forth as though he can erase the El Rey like an Etch-a-Sketch. His hand works down the length of Pete’s cock and back again. It feels unreal levels of good, he rolls his hips up into Patrick’s palm, bites his lip and feels it burn through his groin. “Come on, let’s go home…”

“Patrick,” Andy intervenes from the doorway, eyes anywhere but on them. Patrick’s cock is half-hard under his jeans, thick and framed by dark denim. He’s not even trying to hide it, barely acknowledging Andy beyond a bored eye roll. Pete is under no illusions whatsoever that his own thin hold on his once-strong sense of decency is the only thing between Andy and a floor show. “You were waiting for Pete, now he’s here. This is a contractual obligation, man. You _have_ to go out there.”

“No!” Patrick’s bonhomie evaporates, unlike the alcohol chasing through his bloodstream. He snatches off his sunglasses and hurls them against the wall. Pete supposes he should be thankful it wasn’t the champagne bottle aimed at Andy. “You — you don’t get to fucking tell me what to do! I — _I’m_ the rock star, _not you_ , you’re a— a fucking _lackey_! If I don’t want to go out there, I — I fucking _won’t_ and, what? They’ll fire _you_? You think I give a _fuck_ , I—”

This isn’t the same Patrick that stood in Pete’s trailer eight hours ago. This is a different beast entirely. An ego fueled by bubbles and blow, the sweet outer constructs that make up the fibers of his personality peeled back, stripped away and nothing left behind but instinct and desires all tangled with self-image.

“Shh-shh-shh, babe,” Pete takes the flushed-damp heat of Patrick’s face in both hands, smudges his thumbs along the razor-sharp ridges of his cheekbones. Patrick’s lips are raw, bitten red and damp as he grinds his teeth and stares back, petulant, from blown-wide eyes, pupils impossibly deep-dark and consuming all but the faintest ring of aqua-blue. “C’mon, gorgeous, a few songs, right? You’ve got fans out there waiting for you. An hour, tops, then we can go home, yeah?”

Patrick sinks his teeth into the flushed curve of his lower lip. It looks the way it does when he’s been sucking dick. Pete’s stomach flips like he’s on a rollercoaster, his fingers tightening in the softness of Patrick’s hair. Patrick sighs, “But—”

“An hour,” Pete repeats softly. “For me?”

Patrick glares, soft mouth shaped to a pout as he blinks around those plate-wide pupils. “I don’t _want_ to.” Pete could point out that bullshit like that won’t hold with the 700 kids packed shoulder to shoulder under the chandelier out in front of the stage. But before he’s forced to, Patrick sighs, rolls his eyes. “Fuck, _fine_. Jesus Christ, the two of you need to lighten the fuck up, you know? You — you got the set list? The fuck am I even singing? Let — let me see. You got Michael, right? I don’t have to fucking _play_ too, do I?”

Privately, Pete thinks this is a shitty idea. Patrick’s clearly a couple lines and a bottle of champagne past completely trashed. He can’t even sit straight on the couch. Andy’s talking in the background about getting a stool on stage, changing the vibe to something cool and acoustic.

They rush him to the stage. Pete’s pretty sure this is so they can get him out there before he either changes his mind or loses consciousness entirely.

“Is this a good idea?” he asks as Patrick leans into Charlie — fuck, he looks so fucking _small_ — some tech or another tucking in his in-ears, sliding his mic pack into his back pocket.

Andy, an asshole, shrugs. “You got a better one?”

Pete does, actually. He has the one where they put Patrick in one of those fancy Mercedes out back and drive him straight to The Betty Ford Clinic. But he doesn’t say it, too cowardly, too caught up in the way Patrick grins at him, sweat-damp and soft. Pete thinks this is a horrible, twisted, terrible plan. He has no way of making it stop.

The crowd has shifted from restless to ugly, that low-thrum murmur of impending threat that Pete’s heard in community centers and basement shows in a different lifetime. They have maybe three minutes before this slips from a show to a riot, Pete can taste it, metallic at the back of his tongue, blood in the water.

“This is a bad idea,” he tells Charlie. “Maybe we should—”

The lights go down, the crowd starts to scream, Patrick is stumbling into the spotlight. He staggers into the mic stand, pitching like he’ll fall flat on his ass until Michael fists a hand into his belt and hauls him upright. It’s a testament to their working relationship that Michael doesn’t flinch. Instead, he moves subtly closer so Patrick can lean into him. It looks like harmless stage gay. Pete knows it’s actually a desperate bid to ward off the effects the champagne is having on Patrick’s inner ears.

“Hey there, motherfuckers!” Patrick appears to have no concept of an indoor voice, beating the microphone to death with a bellow pushed straight from the depths of his chest. “You ready to hear some awesome fucking music?”

Pete hears the sharp intake of breath hissed through the teeth of the suit next to him. There’s a roar from the crowd as the place erupts, as they surge for the barrier and reach for him, like they can achieve absolution with the brush of their fingertips to the toes of Patrick’s loafers.

“Is he _high_?” someone mutters into Pete’s ear.

“What am I? His fucking _biographer_?” Pete snaps back, childish. He moves away, stands against a flight case where he can watch Patrick sweat through his shirt.

“This song is about a dude,” Patrick blinks, sways, Pete sinks his teeth into his lip until it aches, “but Island are fucking _homophobic assholes_ so I have to say it’s about a — a chick. Can you,” he rests his forehead against his mic, feedback scratching speakers for half a heartbeat before someone gets it under control, “can you fucking _believe_ that shit? I — I gotta uh, stand up here — _me_ — and fake no fuckin’ homo.”

It doesn’t take long for Andy to disappear, lost amongst a crowd of Island executives in a haze of complimentary scotch. Wealthy white men congratulating themselves on another deal well done. Meanwhile the star, the one paying their bonus checks, woozes into his mic stand once more. Pete bites his lip and promises himself he won’t be the one to step on stage and insist this charade comes to an end before someone — before _Patrick_ — gets hurt.

Ten minutes pass. Twenty. He has no idea how Patrick’s pulling it off, how the lighting seems to wash away the flush of the booze and coke, how the sweat makes him a dozen different shades of beautiful. He’s doing it though, blasting through the set list with aplomb. If something seems off when he talks to the crowd between songs, no one is going to acknowledge it. If he’s biting his lips bloodied, grinding his teeth, rambling between songs until someone breaks him out of it with a bass riff or a drum roll, everyone seems cool with pushing it to the side.

Pete is almost convinced this might be fine.

Patrick is on his feet and something close to normal. Center stage and under every spotlight, he’s rolling his hips, grinding like he does when he’s fucking down onto Pete’s cock. The crowd adore it, every second of it, drenching their panties for the guy only Pete gets to touch. Patrick plants his feet, tips up his chin and draws a breath, reaching for the soaring note of Dance Miserable. He hits it, fluid as the flow of champagne, rich as cream, catches the edge of it and drags it with him. He’s perfect, beautiful, utterly ethereal.

Until he’s not.

It happens in slow motion, the way his eyes roll back, the note faltering, cracking, shattering like glass. He tenses straight then slumps, knees folding under him as he staggers, crashes, hits the stage with a screech of feedback. There’s the strangest hum of silence for a second as the band staggers to a halt around him. Pete can hear his heartbeat humming static in his ears, the heavy way his throat contracts as he swallows. He waits, panicked, for Patrick to move.

Patrick doesn’t.

The crowd roars back to life, scared now, their secondhand fear itching through Pete’s veins. Patrick’s dead, Pete thinks, aneurysm, heart attack, the details don’t matter. He doesn’t know if he makes it to Patrick first or Charlie does, all he knows is that he’s skidding on his knees across the dust of the stage and meeting like they’re taking prayer together.

They bracket Patrick — pale, still — like bookends. Pete hauls him onto his back, burnt hot with sticky panic, fingertips following the curve of a clammy brow. He’s still breathing but not responding, out of it, lolling and eyes rolling as Charlie hauls him to his feet and drags him off the stage.

The fans are probably pissed. Pete is aware of them in the way that he’s aware of extras on set; they’re there but they don’t matter, set dressing in the background lending the hum of artificial noise to the reality of the stars. By the time Pete has fought his way past security, past medics and label staff weighing in for their pound of flesh, Patrick is back in the room. Sort of.

“Pete,” he whispers, leaning into him. He’s shaking, burning up, nails sinking into Pete’s thigh as he burrows under his arm. “Want to — can we go home?”

Pete strokes his hair. There’s a bowl in his lap that smells of vomit, spattered with bitter yellow bile and not much else. Pete wonders again if he’s been eating. “Babe, you need to see a doctor, you—”

“Take him home,” Andy is holding half a conversation with them, the other half focused on his phone as he mutters excuses about food poisoning, an undisclosed virus, everything but the truth — that Patrick was left unsupervised to take coke supplied by _some fucking guy_. “Get him to bed and keep an eye on him. He’ll be fine come morning. He always is.”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Pete asks furiously. He’s not asking much, he swears to God he’s not, just basic human decency. “He needs a fucking _doctor_ , he—”

“He has food poisoning,” Andy cuts him off loudly, like anyone in the room is buying his bullshit. “He’ll be okay in the morning.” He leans in close, the smell of spearmint gum sharp on his breath. “If he goes to the hospital, the press are gonna follow you there and this is gonna be all over E! within the hour. Take him back to his place and let him sleep it off.”

There’s a car outside, Charlie tells them so. Pete is perilously close to out of options, visions of seizures dancing in his head as he pulls Patrick to his feet and slings the deadweight of his arm around his shoulders. On the way to the door he pauses, leaning into Andy’s space.

“Some guy, huh?” he spits, venom bitter on the tip of his tongue. “And what would’ve happened if one of those kids in the crowd brought in something they bought from _some guy_? Fucking hypocrite.”

They glide through Los Angeles in silence. Patrick sleeps or passes out, head on Pete’s chest and breath skittering warm across his throat. Pete, not for the first time, asks himself where the hell all of this is going.

At the house, he hauls Patrick upstairs. He lowers him onto the bed, strips him down to his underwear and feeds him sips of water from a sports bottle he finds buried under the sink. Patrick doesn’t react much, head in Pete’s lap, whimpering now and again like his skull is caving in. Pete hasn’t checked the cabinet for Advil.

Now he’s laid out, pale and small against the sheets, Pete can assess the body he hasn’t seen properly in weeks. The soft plush of padding he carried over his stomach is gone. He’s all angles and bones, his hips, ribs, collar bones cresting sharp from the soft pale of his skin. It’s even more shocking next to Pete, gym-ready for his new role, buffed up broad enough that his lack of physical height doesn’t matter. Tomorrow, Pete thinks, he’ll make him breakfast. Something good, something with a ton of carbs and calories to soak up the inevitable comedown.

Patrick blinks, momentarily lucid, cracked lips slipping into a smile as he stares up at Pete from endless eyes. “I — thanks.”

“For what?” Pete grins, more playful than he feels as he teases his fingers through Patrick’s bangs.

“For taking care of me,” Patrick sighs, shifts, closes his eyes once more. “I — I fuck up a lot. But I love you. You — you do… _know_ that, right?”

“I know,” Pete reassures him, leaning back into the headboard and watching the way Los Angeles sours the depth of the night sky with artificial light. “I love you, too.”

“It was — if Travie got it…” Patrick trails off then tries again. “It was just bad shit, you know?”

Pete lies to the both of them. “Sure, that’s all it was. Get some rest.”

Patrick closes his eyes, nods. Pete’s chest constricts. Patrick is a detonation in slow motion and Pete wonders if this is the second he’s starting to tear apart down the seams. He doesn’t sleep at all, trading rest for watching the way Patrick’s ribs rise and fall with each breath.

*

“The AMAs.”

Patrick scowls at the ceiling and wonders what the hell he did in this or any other life to deserve an agent who believes it’s appropriate to call before nine in the morning. The bed is barely warm, clinging to the shadow of Pete’s body heat. Presumably, Pete is already at the gym. He backtracks for a moment — rearranging the sounds he’s pretty sure Andy made and making a valiant attempt to process them.

It doesn’t work. “The _what_? Don’t regular people say _hello_ , Andrew?”

Andy, it appears, is unwilling to play nicely. “The American Music Awards. I assume you didn’t forget about them?”

“Oh,” says Patrick who, honestly, had absolutely forgotten about them entirely. He lies. “Of course not.”

“ _Right_.” There are about eleven additional syllables in that one word. At least seven of them are woefully uncalled for. Patrick scowls a little harder then stops when the headache kicks in. “Your tailor is booked for eleven, please make sure you’re wearing pants when he arrives. Also, it’s black tie, make sure Pete understands that this means an actual _tie_ and he doesn’t show up in another fucking band tee.”

“Black tie, Jesus Christ, got it. Are you PMSing, or…?”

“Oh, and Patrick?” Andy pauses in that dramatic way that ensures he gets the attention he obviously desperately lacks at home. Patrick sighs. “You’re tipped to clean up so could you do me a solid and at least _try_ to stay sober for this?”

Patrick bristles and immediately resolves to do no such goddamn thing. “Listen, I _told_ you, the El Rey was because of the shit that guy gave me. I’m used to better stuff than that, it was a bad reaction—”

“Yeah, of course,” Patrick will stake his reputation, his investment portfolio and the vintage Mercedes he isn’t allowed to drive that Andy is rolling his eyes right now, “Please. Try not to embarrass any of us — including yourself — anymore than you already have.”

Listen, it’s not that Patrick’s ungrateful for the spin Crush threw on the incident at the El Rey. He _is_ , okay? He absolutely is. Patrick is neither stupid nor naive, he knows it took Herculean levels of positive press influence to make the ‘mystery virus’ stick. It’s more that he’s growing increasingly pissed off that Andy keeps hoisting this particular stick to beat him with.

“I can fire you,” Patrick points out. “I can get another agent.”

Andy chuckles, entirely without humor. “Good luck, kid.”

*

Because Andy told him black tie, Patrick uses his wardrobe choices to stage a visual fuck you; black jeans, Pete’s leather jacket over a white button down and, a clothing-related middle finger, a black tie. Next time, Andy will be more specific. Pete is distracting and delicious in the kind of beat-up biker jacket that knocked a couple thousand dollars from Patrick’s net worth over an old Truant Wave tour shirt, his jeans slashed almost to indecency. Proving that he’s both a flannel and a leather jacket bisexual, something red and black is knotted around his waist. The red-carpet arrival shots are going to slam harder than Pete’s combat boots.

None of this matters however, since Patrick is pretty sure the stuff Travie handed him backstage isn’t kicking in.

He knows this because anxiety is currently tying him in knots, threading crossways and lengthwise around his chest until he can’t breathe. The panic attack is catastrophic, biblical and imminent. Pete’s eye color — the _exact_ shade of it — suddenly seems pressingly important. It’s all Patrick can think about.

Which is good, because this means he’s not thinking about the possibility of getting up on stage to take his award for Artist of the Year (to join Pop/Rock Male Artist and Pop/Rock Album already safely set aside with someone _way_ more responsible than Patrick). The problem is, he’s pretty sure this next one’s about to be presented by Adam Lambert. And he sort of can’t remember if he’s ever fucked him or not.

(Odds are high that it’s a yes. Odds are somewhat higher that he never called him afterward. He has vague memories — fogged mirror, bottom of a lake sort of impressionistic recollections — of featuring as a guest judge on American Idol in 2009. He thinks this may be the reason he was never invited back.)

Anyway, back to the fruitless fixation. “What — what color are your eyes?” Pete seems weirdly intent on prying Patrick’s fingers from his knee. This is both unfriendly _and_ terrible boyfriend behavior. Patrick realizes he may be breaking the skin and relaxes his hold a fraction. “Dude, seriously. What color are they?”

“My what?” Pete frowns. “My — _eyes_?”

“You know what? It’s fine,” Patrick is scratching through his jacket pocket, fingertips brushing the safety blanket of a Ziplock baggie brimmed with relief, “I’m gonna go to the bathroom and—”

“Brown, babe,” Pete interrupts, which is great for knocking the needle from the record of Patrick’s crippling social anxiety, but bad because he can’t remember the question Pete’s answering. “My eyes. They’re brown, okay?”

Patrick feels that this is demonstrably untrue. “They’re prettier than brown,” he insists, leaning closer. Pete smells of cologne and champagne and expensive leather. Those not-brown eyes widen a little. “So, listen, when I was like —”

“And, the award for Artist of the Year 2011 goes to…”

Patrick is interrupted by Adam sliding his thumb along the edge of the award envelope. There are at least three high-definition cameras trained on Patrick, catching the sweaty way he palms his face and takes a deep breath, reproducing it in glorious technicolor on the enormous screen at the back of the stage. They pan the other nominees. Patrick arranges his face into his best modest-and-unassuming expression and hopes he remembered to wipe his nose after his last trip to the bathroom.

The theater does a good impersonation of holding its breath as a collective entity. As though no one has any idea if it’s going to be Patrick or Katy fucking Perry up on that stage in thirty seconds. Los Angeles is as fake as the movies that lend it its infamy. Patrick keeps smiling hopefully.

“... Patrick Stump!”

He’s out of the room again. He snaps his head around like this is his doctor’s office. “Hmm?”

“Babe!” Pete hisses, hauling him in for a kiss, a little church tongue, classy. Patrick likes that about Pete, he’s so effortlessly _good_ with the press bullshit. He opens his mouth to tell him so but Pete shoves him gently. “Go!”

Standing is interesting. Moving is a revelation. Patrick is familiar with the term ‘walking on air’ but suspects this has less to do with elation at picking up the award and more to do with the coke choosing precisely _now_ to kick in. He trips on the bottom step, then the top one, Adam catches him by the shoulder of his jacket and hauls him upright.

“Congratulations, friend,” Adam’s smile is too courteous to be entirely professional. Patrick can remember the not-so-finer details now. He definitely should have called him. “Another for the collection.”

All Patrick can do is giggle.

The glass prism weighs a ton more than the last one seemed to. “Holy crap, did they fill this one with lead?” The audience ripples with laughter they don’t mean. Fake, fake, fucking fake. Still, Patrick’s here now and he hasn’t rehearsed a speech. “I think I have a sex toy not dissimilar to this.”

The laughter keeps coming and so does the buzz. It’s blooming, crawling through Patrick’s veins.

“Wow,” Patrick looks at the award, the symbolism of his career, “So, listen. When I was like, I don’t even know, nineteen? Twenty? Something like that. I — uh — I got my first number one and it was like, it was _insane_ , you know? And we — me and my band — we went to the bar and we got _wasted_ , yeah? And I — because I’m nineteen and I don’t know shit about shit—” and here he pauses, smiles at the faces he can’t really see, not without glasses, not without contacts, “—so, I’m there. I’m _fat_ , I’ve got those sideburns and I say to the bartender, ‘what’s the most expensive bottle of booze you’ve got back there?’ and he gets it for me.”

This is creeping into the Top Five Worst Patrick Stump Award Acceptance Speeches of All Time. At the moment, it’s sitting right around number four. Worse than the 2007 Grammys and the incident with the champagne bottle. Nowhere close to as bad as the Video Music Awards and the wardrobe malfunction that he no longer talks about in interviews.

“He gets it for me,” he continues, “and I’m like ‘whiskey?’ because, you know what? I’m _nineteen_ and I just went number one. I’m expecting like — vintage champagne or something, right? He looks at me like I crawled straight out of Gage Park, looks me right in the eyes and he says ‘it’s _Armagnac’_. And, like, he doesn’t add ‘moron’ but I can hear it. I charge it to the label’s credit card and we spend the rest of the night getting _smashed_ on eight thousand dollar _Armagnac_. Wild. Goddamn _wild_.” He thinks he can see Pete somewhere in the front row, smiles at the hazed shape of him and bites his lip. “But that’s the color, babe. That’s the goddamn color. Not brown — Armagnac.”

He won’t remember leaving the stage.

But he will remember the applause.

*

They’ve been at the after party for a couple hours. It’s at the Microsoft Theater and someone’s really gone all out on the Great Gatsby theme they’re running with. Pete’s lost count of the number of dirty martinis he’s watched Patrick take from waitresses dressed as flapper girls. But, right now, he’s holding court in the men’s bathroom.

“You can tell a truly great venue by its bathroom,” Patrick tells Pete with grandeur. Pete is the most terrified he’s ever been in his life. He sets up a line on the countertop, leans down and takes it in a long huff. He’s so unfairly beautiful like this, traced from _amour propre_ and self-assurance. “Like, take The Wiltern. Was that the Grammys or…? Anyway. _No_ flat surfaces in the men’s room. Not a single goddamn one. We spent the night popping bumps in the toilet stalls like college kids. But this?” He brushes a fingertip along the countertop, taps it down like punctuation. “I _like_ this.”

It’s bizarre to watch: a scene from the kind of movie Pete wanted to make back when he was young and obsessed with being edgy. Dealers aren’t even subtle out there in the venue, trading pre-weighed ego for discreet folds of cash passed to PAs. Pete has watched Travie speak to a guy entirely openly, in view of a security guard. Pete wonders if, in this entirely different world, this is all okay. Patrick can afford the very best, after all. There’s no worry of picking up coke cut with baking soda or something worse.

The door swings open. Pete’s on the verge of a heart attack but whoever it is keeps talking to their companion, pops a couple pills by the sink and, with a nod in the mirror, makes their way back into the venue. Pete relaxes, smiles at Patrick across marble and misadventure.

“See what I mean? Classy.”

*

It’s two in the morning and Patrick’s drifting down from the high. He likes this part, likes the way the chemicals bleed from his bloodstream. He likes it even more as they head out towards the car, Pete’s arm slung over his shoulder, the sharp sensation of stubble grating sore against his temple.

“Proud of you, babe,” Pete whispers into Patrick’s hair. “You fucking _killed_ it.”

There are photographers between the door and the car. The hacks too hopeless to get press passes for the actual event. The ones that miss the red-carpet glamour and lurk, hoping for the kind of candids they can sell to gossip rags. Photographers like Shane fucking Morris, his rent apparently paid entirely by snapping irritatingly unflattering pictures of celebrities in general and Patrick in particular.

Patrick is not in the mood to deal with this right now.

“Patrick!” Shane calls, already hoisting his camera and straining past a couple of other paps for his shot. “Good night, buddy?”

Patrick pauses in the doorway. His tie is long gone, his collar askew, he doesn’t need a mirror to know he looks post-party not-quite-chic. “Fuck.”

“You know him?” Pete hauls him a little closer, Patrick’s shoulder jammed to the heat of Pete’s armpit. “Should we call Charlie over?”

“He’s — he’s an asshole, that’s all.” Patrick shakes his head and tries not to think of the many uncomplimentary pictures that have featured in many unsavory magazines. The kind of thing anyone with a grudge might show to his mom back home in Chicago. Which means Patrick has to deal with another worried voicemail he has no intention of returning. People like Shane throw Patrick’s life under a lens and force him to be introspective in ways that made him fire his therapist. “Let’s go.”

“Come on, Patrick,” Shane taunts from behind his camera as they head towards the car. No more than thirty feet to go. “Aren’t you gonna give me one of those gorgeous smiles? Just for me?”

“Back off,” Pete snarls from the corner of his mouth. Something is burning in Patrick’s chest. The flicker-flame spark of fury buoyed on the artificial ego articulated by barbiturates. He keeps walking.

Shane laughs. It’s not a pleasant sound. “ _Oh-ho-ho_! Got your _girlfriend_ in your corner now?”

“Go fuck yourself.” Patrick regrets it as soon as he says it. All he’s done is demonstrate weakness, deliver up his self-esteem for Shane to take a well-aimed kick.

“Aww, that’s _so_ sweet. How about a kiss?” Shane puckers up in demonstrative invitation. “Come on, _God_ hates fags but National Enquirer _loves_ them.”

Patrick slams to a halt. His shoulders are tense and he’s not sure he remembers how to relax them. He turns, very slowly, to face Shane. “What,” he begins carefully, “did you call us?”

Pete attempts to tug him in the direction of the waiting car. Charlie is approaching.

“Patrick, come on, it doesn’t matter.”

Shane smiles a little wider. “Oh, you don’t like that word? _Faggot_?”

Patrick _thinks_ he should walk away. He should get into the car and go home and sober up. Shane will still be there next time and the time after that and it — it doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.

It matters. It _matters_ and there’s a yawning canyon between what Patrick _thinks_ and what he _does._

His fingers lock into the camera strap around Shane’s neck and, honestly, at this point, he doesn’t know if he’s going to beat him to death with his own shitty Nikon or choke him with it. The strap snaps, breaks away and the camera is crashing to the asphalt at their feet, shattering on impact. Patrick crunches the heel of his dress shoe down hard enough to ache for good measure.

“You fucking cocksucker!”

Patrick throws the first punch, his knuckles exploding white hot with pain as they split across the ivory slash of Shane’s teeth. He gets another swing in with his left hand, weaker, Shane’s nose still makes a satisfying noise in the brief second before his knuckles slick with blood.

There’s a fist lodged in his stomach. Burning, it sucks the air from his lungs as they stumble to the ground together, an inelegant tangling rush. The next one catches the side of his face and knocks him dizzy, a burst of wet copper at the back of his tongue. Shane has the weight advantage, he’s fucking _huge_ , but Patrick is on top, straddling his hips as he jerks back, intent on slamming his forehead into Shane’s face.

He doesn’t have the air to curse, his vision pricked at the corners with the pop of flashbulbs, the gasping ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ of a studio audience, ricocheting with canned laughter that buzzes through the base of his skull. He thinks he hears Pete yelling, he _definitely_ hears Charlie yelling. Knuckles connect with his eye socket and the world explodes into starlight as he slumps, dazed. He throws that headbutt, vision washing white. Another fist hits him in the mouth, his lip gives around his teeth.

“Enough!” He’s lifted, curious lack of gravity making his head spin as he carries on throwing punches, elbows, the heel of his shoe catching something soft. He hears someone yelp — could be Shane, could be Charlie — as he’s hauled towards the car. “Get inside!”

“I will fucking _sue_ you!” Shane is screaming after him. The paparazzi circus is running all three rings and Patrick has no idea if he’s the ringmaster or the clown. “You guys all saw that! You’re _all_ witnesses!”

“Go fuck yourself!” Patrick manages to fire off before the door swings closed behind him. He’s buzzing, burnt up like touch paper with adrenaline. His hands shake, stomach bottomed out as he collapses into the seat. “You piece of fucking _shit_!”

The door slams.

“Shit, babe,” Pete is grinning, infectious, shining walk-of-fame bright in the backseat as he smudges his thumb along the wound-raw burst of Patrick’s bloodied lip. The car is spinning, chaos caught on a turntable with Patrick at the farthest edge and tossed along in orbit. “Did you kick him in the _nuts_? I mean, he fucking _deserved_ it but — who the fuck taught you how to throw a punch? You never close your fist like that! Shit, is — is it broken? Are you okay? You look super fucking pale—”

It’s too much, the kaleidoscope crushing Patrick at the center. He vomits, sour-sharp and burning, all over Pete’s expensive shoes.

*

“Rehab.”

Patrick has been called to a meeting like this before. He’s sat in this very chair, slumped petulant and childish, lower lip pushed out and arms crossed defensively. He’s blinked behind expensive sunglasses against the glare of the floor-to-ceiling windows in Andy’s exclusive corner office overlooking downtown LA. His headache throbs with his pulse throbs with his lip. His knuckles are raw, scraped red and scabbed across the crest of the bone. He’s hungover and ready to take it out on anyone necessary. He glares down at the pamphlets slung onto the desk in accusation.

Patrick considers a counter-offer of dignified silence but tosses that aside in favor of open hostility. “Fuck you.”

“No!” Andy’s fist crashes down to his desk. It’s a solid fist and Patrick jumps. “You listen to me, asshole. That guy is threatening to _sue_ you. By extension, that means he’s threatening to sue Island and he’s threatening to sue _me_.”

“He started it.” Patrick mutters at his shoes. They don’t offer anything in the way of sympathy.

“What are you, fucking _three_?” Both fists come down this time but Patrick is ready for it, chin raised defiantly as Andy gestures at the pamphlets once more. “You punched a photographer in the fucking _face_ and broke not just his camera, but his _fucking nose_. I — I can’t spin this for you anymore, Patrick. The press is up your ass right now and — don’t you get it?” he sucks a breath that whistles between his teeth, “If you go for a stint in rehab and pay damages, he’s agreed to drop it. Personal growth, facing your demons, all of that bullshit. Now, there’s space for you at Passages, Promises or Wonderland, pick one.”

He reaches forward, takes the pamphlets from the desk and casually leafs through them. They look nice. He’s been to all of them before. His last stint at Passages left him with a hefty bill for talking therapy and a new dealer jotted into the back of his little black book. Worth it, he thinks, the blow that guy provides is _exquisite_.

The silence echoes between them. Patrick isn’t stupid and dislikes being mistaken for such. He’s not dumb, he’s not weak and he will literally — _literally_ — remove his own testicles with the bluntest end of a half-hot flat iron before he’ll cow to the whim of homophobic _assholes_ like Shane fucking Morris. It’s Thanksgiving in a week; Patrick has plans involving Pete, their bed and silencing his phone for twenty-four hours.

He rips each pamphlet neatly in half, drops the pieces one-by-one into the trash can by Andy’s desk.

“Patrick,” says Andy, robotic control rolling rigid over his features. “He’s going to sue you.”

Patrick is already at the door. He pauses, flicks his sunglasses down his nose and regards Andy over the frames. “Then call my goddamn lawyer.”

*

“A party,” says Patrick, grinning his most attractive and boyish grin.

Pete, barely halfway through his first coffee and waiting for the caffeine to do him the good grace of kicking in, blinks at Patrick across the breakfast bar. “Party?”

“For new year’s,” Patrick pours clarification into Pete’s lack of enthusiastic response and, mercifully, more coffee into his cup. “A masked ball! It’ll be awesome — amazing! — people are gonna be talking about this until — until the fucking _Grammys_.”

The Grammys are less than two months after New Year’s. This seems a low level of aspiration for infamy but then, the longevity of Hollywood gossip seems to be measured in dog years.

“A party,” Pete repeats slowly, tongue blistered on another swig of superb French roast. “Didn’t Andy like, _ban_ you from getting your face in the press before the next leg of the tour? Under threat of immediate and enduring legal action?”

Patrick makes a noise that’s half raspberry, half derisive snort. “Like he’s the goddamn boss of me.”

“Sort of is, babe.”

“ _Anyway_ , it’ll be _fine_. We can like, rent out the Ritz or something, the whole nine yards. C’mon, don’t you like parties?”

Right now, Pete likes the idea of falling back into bed for a couple hours and pretending like he didn’t get home from filming three hours ago. And maybe a blowjob. He takes another mouthful of coffee and considers the best response he can give to maintain both his point and his chances of receiving fellatio. “You can behave?”

“Bitch, _please_ ,” Patrick rolls his eyes, “I’ll be the poster boy for dull-as-shit, respectable behavior.”

*

Pete is unconvinced that Patrick understands the concept of ‘respectable behavior’. Patrick is currently on his knees in the back of the town car, soft, wet mouth stretched wide around the rude, red length of Pete’s throbbing cock. But the windows are the kind of expensive, tinted privacy glass that absorbs light like a black hole, the screen is rolled up between them and the driver and, honestly, he never did regain the ability to say no. He lets it happen.

He twists his fingers a little harder into the platinum blond of Patrick’s hair, thrusts up into the willing invitation of that mouth and groans under his breath. “Fuck yeah. You — you suck dick better than anyone else I’ve ever — swear to fucking _God,_ Patrick.”

They’re both breathing hard, lungs grasping greedily like they can’t share the air in the back of the limo. The slick, wet sound of Patrick’s mouth working his cock in perfect 7/4 time is more intoxicating than the golden glasses of bubbles downed somewhere between the Hills and Sunset Boulevard. Pete is going to come and his only regret is that he can’t do it across the pretty mask dashed across Patrick’s face.

Pete slides his thumb along the wet, lush flush of Patrick’s lower lip, feels the spit gathering there, the way it snags on the thick, dark vein along the underside of his cock. “I — I’m gonna — oh, _fuck_!”

He comes, explosive, sensation chasing aftershocks along the prickle-burnt stretch of his skin. He cries out, knees locked and desperate, fisting his hand in the softness of Patrick’s fuck-trashed hair. He shivers, shudders out the last of his orgasm and hauls Patrick up by the lapels, licking into his mouth and dragging the slick-wet mess of it between their lips and over their tongues.

“Fuck,” he breathes, washed in the scent of Patrick’s expensive cologne, expensive suit. His masquerade mask is cutting sharp into the bridge of his nose, the endless depths of Patrick’s ancient, lakeshore eyes framed by the ornamentation of his own mask. “You’re a horny little shit. You know that, right?”

Patrick hums against his throat, noses delicately along the high line of his collar. “Would you have me any other way?”

Pete pauses, considers the possibility of another Patrick. He shakes his head, clears his throat and throws on his best approximation of British accent.

“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume on the violet is—” he lapses back into the graceless flush of half-drunk Chicago, “—just fuckin’ silly. I dunno. I hated Shakespeare.”

Patrick snorts. “Your dick is literally hanging out of your pants, it’s a little late to start shooting for classy.”

Like he’s proving a point, Patrick fishes a tiny glass vial from his pocket, snorting down a quick bump with a shudder as Pete watches. He holds it out in generous invitation, eyebrows raised above the decorative sweep of his mask, shrugging when Pete declines with a shake of his head. God, but he’s so breathtakingly beautiful. So deliciously constructed of pale and platinum, glittering enticingly against the expensive ink-dark of his beautifully tailored tuxedo.

“Can I suck you?” Pete asks, the formality of it laughable with his damp prick sliding sticky with spit and come in the confines of his underwear. “Fuck, I — I really, _really_ want to.”

Patrick straddles his thighs, arms wrapped close around the back of his neck. He leans in, bruising kisses along the line of Pete’s jaw, biting down on his lower lip. It’s hard to think, to breathe, consumed by the scent of heated skin and expensive cologne. Is — is he high? Is it possible that the heaped points of white powder snorted into Patrick’s bloodstream have cast enough airborne intoxication to spiral him into something dangerous?

Patrick licks over his teeth, kisses him like he’s testing the way they set in his jaw. They’re on Sunset now, rolling through LA traffic towards Boulevard 3, nestled somewhere innocuous between a shitty motel and a Staples superstore. Hollywood glamour lurks in curious places, Pete thinks as he palms at the plump flush of Patrick’s ass.

“Later,” Patrick whispers, each word hot and damp, slicking against Pete’s skin. He fists a hand into the bleach-bold silk of hair at the nape of Patrick’s neck, pulls back his head and sucks the shadow of his mouth to the pale skin right above his shirt collar. Patrick giggles, glazed behind his mask. “Tasteful. Very tasteful.”

“When we get home,” Pete breathes against the sticky skin behind Patrick’s ear, the precise spot that makes Patrick shudder under the shape of his lips, “I’m gonna tie you down and fuck you through the goddamn floor.”

The town car draws to a halt outside the club. They look fuck-wrecked already, flushed rose enough that the pop of flashbulbs will expose them, hair a mess and suits askew; evidence of backseat debauchery exposed. Patrick grins, already halfway to the door. “Why wait until we get home?”

Resolving not to think about that, Pete takes a deep breath, straightens his lapels and follows Patrick into the blinding pop of flashbulbs.

“Patrick! Pete! Over here!” the paparazzi call their names, Pete is sky-high, towering somewhere above the city and breathing chemtrails. They pause for a picture; Pete’s hand possessive in the small of Patrick’s back, his boyfriend tucked against him tiny and delicate. When they step back outside, it’ll be an entirely different year. Pete intends to make it count.

The venue is beautiful. Galleried, pillared and topped with glass that would lend a view straight to the stars if Los Angeles didn’t choke them entirely in light pollution. There’s a central hall flanked with interestingly dark alcoves that beckon with the promise of carnal temptation, the balconied gallery upstairs robed entirely in shadow.

It’s ostentatious, obnoxious in its extravagance. It’s exactly the sort of place Pete feels at home now but thought he hated. There’s chilled champagne flowing freely, beautiful people in not enough clothes serving drinks to a guest list that reads like the stock inventory for Amoeba Records right across the street.

He slings an arm around Patrick, draws him close and smudges a kiss to his temple. “I’ll say one thing, you throw one hell of a fucking party.”

“I have a flair for event planning,” Patrick smiles teasingly. “The trick is to pay someone else to do all the hard work.”

“Pete!” Joe rushes them from the crowd, the girlfriend that Pete’s never had the time to meet on his arm. There’s free champagne in his free hand. They fall into an awkward hug, one arm each still tangled around their respective significant others. Pete wonders if it should feel this awkward to speak to the man he’s lived with for eight years. “How’ve you been?”

“Oh, great. Sorry I didn’t… call back. Like, a bunch of times, but…” Joe is smiling at him, too eager to dish out forgiveness Pete doesn’t deserve. “You know how it is. I mean, you organize my diary, right? You’re the one keeping me busy, asshole!”

“Yeah,” Joe looks as uncomfortable as Pete feels, the life he left behind detonating in the center of the life he has now. “So, this is, uh — this is Marie. We’ve been dating a while but — yeah. She’s a lawyer.”

It’s impossible to figure out what she looks like. Pete thinks she’s pretty, though.

“Dangerous woman to know,” Patrick slides forward, chemically enhanced charm on display even behind his mask. Joe’s mask is cheap, plastic, no doubt picked up for a couple bucks from Party City. “I’m Patrick, by the way, since Pete doesn’t seem to have brought his big boy manners along with him tonight. So, Marie, law huh? Entertainment? Must be _fascinating_. Did — did someone mention cocktails? I hear Katy Perry’s getting divorced, you have to tell me _everything_ you know…”

They disappear together into the crowd of masquerade masks above ballgowns and black tie. Pete scuffs the toe of his shoe against the floor and leans up against a pillar. Joe’s been his best friend, his closest confidante, for the past five years; why does he have nothing to say?

“Sweet shindig,” says Joe awkwardly, twisting his thumb around the neck of his champagne flute. “Or wait, _is_ this a shindig? Or a hootenanny?”

“What’s the difference?” asks Pete; Joe’s blazed, probably smoked up in the courtyard out back where precisely no one is paying any attention to local or federal law regarding the consumption of marijuana in public places.

“A shindig is chill,” Joe lifts his shoulders in a shrug, eyes widening as Lady Gaga — or someone performing a passable impression of her — wanders past. “Decent tunes, substantial amounts of intoxicating beverages, everyone makes it home safely. A hootenanny? Well, anything goes, you know? A generous slice of hoot, a sprinkling of nanny.”

Pete grins and slings an arm around Joe. His suit is as cheap as his mask. Pete makes an immediate resolution to call his accountant and up Joe’s percentage as soon as the office opens after the holidays.

“I’m pretty sure tonight won’t be over until someone gets arrested. Probably Patrick.”

Joe smiles back and brings their drinks together with a click. “Here’s to you man, finding the perfect partner in crime.”

“And to you,” Pete takes a swig of his champagne and watches Patrick dancing with Marie. This is probably going to be absolutely fine. “For finding the one woman in the greater Los Angeles area who can get my boyfriend out of jail in the morning.”

When Joe laughs, head tipped back and mouth stretched wide, Pete almost believes it was a joke.

*

“ _Babe_!” Patrick grabs him from behind, winding limbs around his waist and dipping down to grope the soft length of his cock through his pants. “Missed you!”

It would be childish, Pete decides, to point out that Patrick was the one that disappeared over an hour ago. In truth, Pete’s sort of used to it at this stage so instead, he turns and slides a hand through the sweat-wet tangle of Patrick’s hair. He’s burning up, flushed pink and pretty in a way that reminds Pete of the curve of his cock against white sheets.

“Missed you, too,” he steals a kiss, a desperate taste of the wet warmth of Patrick’s tongue against his own. “Having fun?”

“Mmm, s’better now you’re here. Come on, dance with me or fuck me in the restroom, I — I gotta do _something_ right now…”

They’re kissing before they make it onto the dancefloor. Patrick’s mouth is damp, his tongue soft like velvet and curling into the ticklish roof of Pete’s mouth. There’s a tightness in Pete’s guts, his heart ticking offbeat with the taste of champagne clinging to Patrick’s lips. “Holy shit,” he whispers, awed in the same way he felt in London. “Fuck, I just…”

They find a booth, find a seat, find the bitter-sweet taste of champagne on one another’s mouths as they kiss. God, how they kiss. Pete’s lips, his tongue and the soft, red wetness of his mouth feel swollen-sore with the pressure of it. He doesn’t need to move ever again, he can stay here listening to a techno dubbed remix of Enter Sandman, tasting the satin of Patrick’s tongue, and exist in some blissful bubble outside of reality

“Patrick, babe!” Someone, some unwelcome interloper, thumps to the couch next to them. Pete blinks back into the room reluctantly and sees this: thick, dark hair in waves that fall to hisshoulders, endless limbs, elegant hands and the thick cleft caught at the chin of a delicately pretty face. Will, he thinks, Will Beckett. “Oh my _gosh_ , I’ve been looking for you _all night_!”

Will is many things; party animal; ironic hipster nontrepeneur, founding failing businesses fast enough to run the risk of depleting daddy’s oil rig fortune; irritatingly talented frontman for some indie setup and well-known lover of boys like Patrick. He’s also, most annoyingly, the supporting act for the next leg of Patrick’s Soul Punk tour and obnoxiously, genuinely friendly to go along with it. An obvious invitation, perhaps, but Pete is calling on every reserve of professionalism he possesses to keep from scowling darkly.

“Hey, you,” Patrick is still rocking down against Pete’s cock as he kisses Will’s cheek. There is possibly a universe in which it’s normal to issue a formal introduction whilst giving a lap dance. Pete’s not sure it’s this one. “This is my boyfriend, Pete. Have the two of you met?”

“Not yet,” Pete pastes on his professional smile and — dodging the kiss Will aims at the corner of his mouth — extends a hand for Will to shake. “Nice to meet you.”

“ _Awww_ ,” Will makes a noise like he’s eleven and Pete is a whole basketful of cute but dim puppies, “He shakes hands like a _real_ manly man! He’s _adorable_.”

“Straight-acting.” Patrick throws air quotes, an eye roll and heavy inflection around the words. Pete suspects this is a joke he isn’t part of as Will joins him for the punchline. “Unless there’s a dick in his mouth!”

It’s not funny but Pete laughs along anyway. Realistically, pinned under Patrick with the weight of his ass warm and heavy on his cock, there isn’t much else he can do. They talk over him, literally, back and forth in references Pete doesn’t understand, talking about people he’s never met. On and endlessly on until Will taps his pocket then the tip of Patrick’s nose and nods in the direction of the bathroom. Patrick goes cross-eyed and adorable behind his mask, nodding brief and languid.

They don’t have to say a word and that — _that_ — leaves Pete irritated beyond rationality. It turns out that annoyance is easier to handle than jealousy, so long as Pete doesn’t examine the similarities. So annoyed is Pete that when Patrick squirms from his lap and lets Will tug him to his feet, he follows.

“Get another drink,” Patrick suggests, pointing in the vague direction of the nearest waiter. “I’ll be right out.”

Pete, an idiot, shakes his head. “I’ll come with you.”

There’s a pause, electric with anticipation as Patrick’s eyebrows arch. “Are you sure?” Pete’s not. He hasn’t been sure of anything since the moment Patrick crashed, wild-eyed and beautiful, through the bathroom door in Avalon. He nods though, and it glows through Patrick like starlight. “Wow, really? Okay, cool, let’s go!”

He doesn’t say any more and neither does Pete. His heart feels wrong in his chest but not in a way he can explain. It’s something like the break of the tide against cliffs; ragged and sharp, unstoppable but fatalistic. To be with Patrick is to trust in the freefall, he reasons, to give himself over to the heat of the moment or burn out like a supernova.

The bathroom is the kind that Patrick likes; endless marble stretching flat under tasteful lighting. It makes Pete’s eyes sting after the pink-purple streaks of neon club lighting out around the dancefloor. Will is tipping pills into his hand from a baggie drawn from the hip pocket of his pants, pastel pale and stamped with designer logos.

Patrick is already at the vanity counter. They’re reflected in the mirror; two masks on two men. It’s out of body, the looped confusion of disassociation as Pete watches Patrick’s reflection chopping two neat lines against a reflected countertop. He looks up and smiles, Hollywood-bright. “Are you sure?”

Again, Pete nods. He raises his shoulders in a shrug because if Will can do it, if Patrick and everyone else in this city can do it, then so can he. His heart is pounding, stuttering raucous against the inside of his ribs, bruising his lungs as his fingers twitch involuntary spasms. Patrick stoops, tiny silver straw caught loosely between pale fingers as he closes his eyes and — deep breath — knocks it back. He shudders, shakes from crown to toes and sags back like it’s already hit.

He holds out the straw and beckons Pete closer. Pete is absolutely _not_ going to overthink this.

The remaining line sits, stark and white against black marble. Chicago snow against the starless dark of an LA skyline at night. Pete takes the straw from Patrick’s hand and steps forward. He feels oddly calm now he’s made the decision to do it.

“That’s right,” Patrick murmurs, “just block the other side. You’re gonna run it along the line as you breathe in and—” Pete takes it down in one deep breath, feels it burn the back of his nose, “—that’s it. _Perfect_.”

The room feels like it’s echoing with his own ragged breathing, bouncing back from the tile as he hauls them in, one, two, three. His nose feels sore already, he palms at it and straightens. He won’t meet his own eyes in the mirror, he can’t.

(He doesn’t want to see if he _likes_ how it looks on him.)

“Tell me when it kicks in,” Patrick says.

Pete itches with the need to be absorbed by the party beyond the door. He laces their fingers and, together, they plunge back into the neon-glow thick of it. It feels like falling through the looking glass and Pete is a flower that can move, tilting Patrick’s mouth to his as they grind together on the dancefloor.

Patrick’s abandoned his jacket somewhere, his bowtie loose around his neck and his hair wilting into his eyes. He’s the most breathtaking sight in the room, pink nipples showing under his shirt. Pete grabs his hips and pulls him in, tight and beautiful.

They must be four songs in when Pete feels it. It’s a crawl of electricity up the length of his spine. It’s static shocks sparking endless from the base of his skull to the tips of his fingers. Blissful, floating euphoria that makes him gasp and choke on air that tingles as he hauls it into aching lungs.

Patrick grins at him, wide and knowing. Pete whispers, awed. “I think it’s kicking in.”

Everything feels, tastes, sharpsweet. It’s a good thing, Pete decides, stroking fingertips along the route of Patrick’s sides, up from his hips and to the rosebud desperation of those nipples. Yeah, this feels insane, freefalling, pitching up or down, he’s not sure, but he knows it feels like rushing through air.

He knows he likes it.

He gropes a hand into the small of Patrick’s back, feels sweat slick under his fingertips and wonders if it’s conductive, like metal. If it can feed the loop of his pulse (thick, wet, messy) into Patrick’s bloodstream by osmosis. Patrick laughs against his mouth and he realizes he said that out loud right as he notices he’s kissing Patrick. God, _fuck_ , how he loves kissing Patrick. He cups his face in both hands and holds him steady, bites bruises into the thick, damp curve of Patrick’s decadent lower lip. He claims Patrick’s mouth, tastes champagne, cocaine, endless want.

When Patrick pulls back, lips red and wet, shining swollen and nipped sore with eager teeth — _Pete’s_ teeth — his eyes are blown wide with chemical need. Deep and dark, there’s almost enough light ranging the edges of the room for Pete to see himself reflected right back in them. Pete knows his gaze is more pupil than coppered iris. It explains the way he can see things shivering on the airwaves between them. He’s going to make a conscious decision not to get freaked out about that.

“Come outside,” he says, though he’s not sure why. People are watching them, looking into the dark, ruined reaches of him. Blazing bright with self-confidence, Pete decides he likes it. “C’mon, gotta — want you to—”

They hit the nighttime air of the courtyard in a merry tangle of limbs and lips. They’re looped threads, caught in indistinguishable knots and frayed ends. He pushes Patrick back against a pillar and kisses him.

“Fucking _want_ you,” he growls, shoving his hips forward for emphasis, letting Patrick feel the heavy heat of his cock behind his zipper. He means the bathroom or the town car or, fuck it, the alley behind the club. Patrick’s hand shapes Pete’s zipper, dances dementable damnation along the solid, blood-thick ache of his prick. The venue no longer matters so much as the urgency for relief. “Here.”

The courtyard is glowing. Pillared alcoves caught between leaf-bare olive trees, dressed in shadow bordering a walled water feature, a set dressing recreation of a Roman bath that no one is supposed to touch. The neon lights seem like they’re dripping into the water, staining it pink and purple, thick like ink. There’s a canopy of pinpricks of sparkling light strung high over their heads, glowing down against their skin and staining them with starlight. Pete is floating, drifting, unsure of when he lost his jacket and tie but kept his mask. He has Patrick pushed to brickwork, warm stone under Pete’s knees. His blood is slow and indolent, the world is staring and Pete? Pete _likes_ it.

The belt, the zipper, the feather-touch of expensive cotton boxer-briefs, all a brief interlude until there’s skin. The soft, warm paleness of Patrick’s thighs and the thick, dark length of his cock. Pete finds the shape, the texture of him with the curve of his lips, maps his way through red-gold pubic hair with the slick slide of his tongue. Above him, Patrick groans, half lost in the pulsing throb of techno music.

Suddenly starving, Pete takes him down, he gorges himself on the lust-thick, swollen fullness of Patrick’s prick. He sucks him desperate, tastes the long, slow pull of sweat-sharp velvet against the curl of his tongue. When Patrick moans, it weaves into the melody of the sound system, it bleeds through Pete’s veins and along the prickle-hair static of his skin. He sinks his nails into Patrick’s hips and sucks him until the world blurs. Pete is both in the room and caught in its orbit; aware of the way his skin pricks pins and needles with the brush of bass lines through his hair whilst entirely lost to anything that isn’t Patrick’s skin, Patrick’s hands, Patrick’s _cock_.

Patrick has a fistful of Pete’s hair, there’s salt on his mouth, streaked sticky with spit across his chin as he pulls back, blinks up and watches the way Patrick watches him. “I’m gonna fuck you.”

“Everyone’s watching,” says Patrick. His voice echoes from the depths of the water behind him, bubbling over his lips. He’s smiling like he doesn’t care as he rakes both hands through Pete’s hair and hauls him up, kissing the taste of cock from his lips.

Pete smirks, arrogant, as he kicks out of his shoes, his dress pants, his cock curving up, thick and fullglorious, to meet the ink on his stomach. “It’s because we’re fucking _beautiful_.”

The water is warm as they slip into it. It ripples, lapping sensation along Pete’s spine as he shrugs out of his shirt. Patrick’s shirt slicks to his skin, sticks and catches against his wrists, the buttons torn open. Water beads through the dusting of coppered hair across his chest. Pete licks the hollow at his collarbone and tastes the starbright edge of the universe. There has never been a being in this or any other dimension as beautiful as Patrick, spangled gold and glittered amethyst under artificial light. Pete’s pulse follows the hand around his cock, the flutter of arteries in Patrick’s throat.

Water cascades to the floor as Patrick pushes away from him, carving bow-lines through surf. He holds his boxers aloft with a grin, lets them hit the water with a wet slap and beckons Pete closer. It’s not deep. On their knees and cocks rubbing greedy against one another, it barely meets the delicate hollow of Patrick’s waist under Pete’s hands. He grasps the soft round of Patrick’s ass, lets it slip through the press of his fingers. He can feel each neuron in his body, sense the way atoms collide and align, imagines he’s only half a heartbeat from controlling them.

Patrick’s cry is operatic as Pete slides a finger inside of him. Smooth, tight heat closing around his grasp. He digs in a second, a third, without really thinking, sliding deep into him. Patrick will ache in the morning and Pete _wants_ him to, wants that sharp reminder that he was here with every breath Patrick takes. Someone — Will? — brushes a hand over Patrick’s damp hair. Pete holds him as he sags against his chest, rolling hips with the rock of Pete’s wrist.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” he chants, desperate, gasping prayer into Pete’s throat. Pete is absolution. Pete is absolute. He sits back on his heels and guides Patrick onto his lap. The aching throb of his cock pushes to the place his fingers curl inside of Patrick. “ _Fuck me_.”

He pulls out his fingers as he presses in his cock. No lube; that should bother him but right now it doesn’t. Pete is everywhere, fucking Patrick, feeling the impossible lack of give enveloping his cock from tip to base as Patrick slides down, watching it happen from somewhere amongst the framework above their heads. He sees himself bite into the flesh of Patrick’s throat, feels it soft and tender under his teeth. “You’re so fucking tight,” he says and Patrick laughs, curling dark and smoking between them. “So fucking tight. So _good_.”

Patrick’s thighs are caught around his waist and Pete is flying, one hand in the small of Patrick’s back, the other caught in platinum blond that curls fern-like tendrils between his fingers. The world is a tangle of thorns, he thinks, all snagging and catching. Patrick rocks against his cock, his own erection hard and obvious and crushed between their stomachs.

A mouth, soft-wet and wanting, works over Pete’s throat, his jaw, finds the fuck-flushed curve of his lips. Patrick kisses like a demand, a bloody holdup bank robbery of a kiss, thumbs hooked over Pete’s ears as he holds him close. They kiss hungry, tongues and teeth as much as lips. Pete’s hand finds the rawness of Patrick’s prick, his thumb curling under the head on each long, dark stroke. Patrick breathes his name like it tastes sweet, poetic.

Pete is sofuckingclose.

He fucks his hips up and into Patrick, finds that feathered thrum of ecstasy on each deep stroke into the heat of him until Patrick is boneless and begging. Pretty-soft words fall like rose petals, the center of a snow globe twisting endlessly around them as Pete fists his cock and fucks him insensible in this wonderful world of starlight and warm, wet sensation.

His orgasm fires slowly, the smoke of it catching low in his belly. It curls and coils, snake-like, as his cock finds the beat of his heart. Pete thinks he sees people watching them, watching him fucking _possess_ Patrick entirely. He doesn’t care. He throws back his head and comes hot and hard and utterly exquisite, his vision torn white to gold and back again, spasming hips and desperate, aching lips.

He collapses back, head under the water as it shivers him with aftershocks, eyes open even as he slips below the surface. Through the ripple-loose haze of chlorinated water, the chandelier glows behind Patrick like a halo.

Pete is entirely, utterly untouchable.


	4. I thought I found rock bottom but maybe it doesn't exist

He wakes on the floor.

It’s been a while, he must confess, since he found himself face down on the carpet. What in the name of God did he drink last night?

He flops to his back, fishlike. He immediately regrets it when the sunlight assaults him like it has a grudge. His nose is sore, the back of his throat stripped raw. He lies very still and resolves not to move until he absolutely has to.

“Babe?” he croaks, his voice rasping, unused. If he cracks his eyelids the barest amount, he can see the shadow of Patrick’s pale hand hanging limp over the side of the mattress. At least one of them made it into the bed. “Fuck, babe. My fucking _head_ —”

He pulls up short. There are, not memories, not exactly. More like half-formed pictures, the blur of developing polaroids crowding in around the paranoid crush of his comedown. Lines laid out on the countertop. The way his blood blazed in his veins. Patrick’s hand warm in the small of his back. Dancing, oh God, so much dancing. Pete was in love with the world for a moment. Cool water, bleach-sharp chlorine and the hardness of Patrick’s cock stretching his mouth at the corners. Everything feeling so hot, bright, _good_. Patrick’s hands, his mouth, the tight, unforgiving push of his body sheathing Pete’s dick as the water lapped around his ass.

So fucking good. His cock twitches, warmth tightening in his groin as he thinks about slipping onto the bed and back into Patrick.

But there’s something else. Half-recalled memories of strangers staring, whispering, so many eyes ranged around them. A spectacle, a sideshow, a pageant parade performance.

His lungs are too tight, panic attack gasps stuttering through him as he lies on the floor and sees the night from the darkness of the comedown rather than the glow of the high. He fucked Patrick. He fucked him — bareback and no lube — in the middle of the courtyard at Boulevard 3. He slams upright and into the migraine that aches fit to crack his skull in two. This is no ordinary hangover. This is the solid, immovable force of an icepick to the back of his head, buried sore between nerve-raw notches of his spine.

“Patrick?” He fumbles for the bed, braced to the edge as he woozes and considers the very real possibility that he might throw up. It’s fine, he’s got this. Deep breaths. “Patrick, wake the fuck up, we have a serious problem…”

He trails off. Patrick is on his back, eyes closed. He’s pale and still, oh so still, ruby painting a terrifying accusation around his nostrils, smeared across his upper lip and down onto his chin. Pete can’t say for sure, but it doesn’t look as though his chest is moving, the regular rise-and-fall of deep sleep respiration terrifyingly absent.

For a moment, Pete can’t bring himself to reach out. He can’t force himself to touch the body laid out on the mattress, to feel him cold and stiff and –

And dead.

Pete has never seen a dead body before, he has no frame of reference. There was never a PSA at school about the correct response to finding his boyfriend unresponsive, no article he’s ever stumbled across on Reddit or Buzzfeed. ‘Ten Ways to Tell If Your Boyfriend OD’d Last Night’. He’s woefully unprepared for the nausea to body slam him, to send him hacking up bile onto the hardwood until his stomach cramps.

Fear hurts his heart, twists through the panic attack to slam his lungs into double time. He can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t stop staring. An ambulance. He needs to find his phone, find Patrick’s phone, find _any goddamn phone_ and call 911.

_The career is over_.

It’s only there for a second; a flashcard of the awful human being he’s become. The thought knocks him cold then knocks him sick. As if it matters if his barely-there career never recovers, what in the name of fuck is he _thinking_? He clambers onto the mattress, takes Patrick’s face in both hands and smooths the matted mess of his hair back, the liminal space between frantic and tender. He’s still warm.

“Patrick?” His thumbs brush the crests of Patrick’s cheekbones, the blood mixed with drool smudging bright against his skin. “Patrick, come on, wake the fuck up. _Please_!”

Pete is the unheeding epicenter of an earthquake. Things crack beneath him, around him, the universe fracturing in the way pale skin shapes under his hands. He’s _warm_ and that has to mean something. Pete would begin CPR but he’s not sure he can recall a single step through the haze of his own waking-nightmare terror. The world, his thoughts, his fragile hold on everything that stops him from screaming is hurtling past at terrifying speed. Pete is pressed to the window of a crashing shuttle watching everything spin away from him and there is nothing and no way to slow it down.

He’s breathing too hard, too fast, stuttering on the precipice of respiratory arrest as he babbles nonsense to the unresisting shape of something that may or may not still be Patrick. He rubs the pad of his thumb through the crusted mess of rust-brown blood around Patrick’s chin. It’s still fresh around his nose. Is that a good sign? Pete doesn’t know. He _doesn’t know._

He lets go, leans down and pushes his ear to the plush of Patrick’s mouth. At first, all he hears is the cacophonous roar of his own racing heartbeat against his eardrum. Then it shudders through him with the crashing force of relief; the slow, wet sound of shallow breathing. It would seem that the rumors of Patrick’s death were greatly exaggerated.

Patrick groans, groggy and lost. “Nngh?”

Until now, Pete had no idea that relief could possibly be such a desperately visceral emotion that he would feel it in his lungs, his heart, his panic-cramped guts. He sags, trembling aftershocks, strung out on adrenaline, and wonders if it’s possible to be terrified into a heart attack.

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ , Patrick.” His teeth rattle so hard it barely qualifies as English.

“Mmph,” Patrick mumbles, rolling over and into his pillow. He doesn’t move, a smear of ruby streaked across the crisp, white Egyptian cotton. When he speaks again, he spits through goose down, voice slurred and out of focus. “Could you maybe keep it the fuck down? Some of us are hungover.”

Fury, it turns out, chases quickly on the dying comet tail of relief. Pete has never, would never, raise a hand to _anyone_ but right now, he is sorely fucking tempted to put a hole in the wall. He can’t stop shaking, fists balled to his thighs as his teeth clatter in his jaw. He’s caught somewhere between icy cold shock and burnt up anger, sinking his teeth into his lip to stop himself from blurting out something regrettable.

He’s into his jeans, shirtless and shoeless but with a bag half-packed before Patrick deigns to roll back over.

“What—” He seems delirious, blinking in and out of focus as he scrubs a hand through his hair and hauls himself halfway to his elbows. “What’re you doing? Come back to bed.”

Pete doesn’t trust himself to speak. Not right now. Not ever, maybe. He pushes things into his bag and bites the soft inside of his cheek until he tastes salt because if he stops, if he lets up for even half a heartbeat, he’s going to start screaming or sobbing.

Both, maybe.

Both, definitely.

The Bowie portrait he bought Patrick for Christmas, commissioned from some insanely talented quirky little up-and-comer out in the Artist District, is no longer propped against the wall where they left it. It’s on the floor, the frame smashed, the canvas torn open like the hauled-out depths of his fire-furious insides. He slips the Rolex Patrick bought him from his wrist and places it down sharply on the nightstand.

Patrick seems to get it.

“You’re leaving.” It’s not a question but a statement, stripped of anything approaching emotion but tinged with self-righteous inevitability. Patrick is blank, reflective, revealing nothing of what shimmers beneath his lake-calm surface as he mirrors back all of Pete’s indignant, impotent fury. “Nice. Happy fucking New Year’s, baby. Are you gonna like, _justify_ this?”

Oh, but Pete is aching. He’s bruise-tender, physically, emotionally sore from the insides and bleeding out. He touches a fingertip to his temple and feels the rush of tangled thoughts as they twist and overlap, itching through his veins and the drum-taut stretch of too-tight skin. He blinks back into the bedroom and looks at Patrick, looks him square in the bloodshot eyes and whispers, “Do you even remember what we did last night?”

Patrick’s eyes narrow then vanish entirely as he tosses his forearm over his face. Pete doesn’t move, caught in the detritus of a room they trashed together. There’s a hole in the wall and a smashed lamp on the floor. He assumes the two are probably related.

“We — we got fucked up,” Patrick offers eventually. The room is very still. “You wanted to, though, I didn’t _make_ you. I — did I like, _say_ something, or?”

“We had sex,” says Pete, carefully factual and avoiding the sleepy warmth of Patrick’s nocturnal erection pitched beneath the sheets. Patrick smirks, it’s all such a _funny_ joke. The tenuous thread binding Pete’s temper frays, snaps, his inner floodwater of furious asshole spilling out between the two of them. “In front of anyone who wanted to watch, in the middle of _your_ fucking New Year’s party.”

Patrick frowns, unwilling or unable to process why this is a bad thing. “Is — is that all?” Pete doesn’t trust himself to reply, shrugging on a shirt around the wound-sharp slash of a sneer. “Babe, there was a — what do you call it again — uh, a media blackout. Yeah. No press, no cameras. It’s _fine_ —”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Pete’s rage is real now, hot and bitter, replacing his blood as he slams his knuckles into the scarred stretch of busted wall by the bed. “Just because it doesn’t wind up on MTV doesn’t make it a-o-fucking-kay! I’m not perfect, I’m fucking _not_ , but I’m not — I’m not like…”

He trails off, unwilling to say it out loud.

“Like me?” Patrick offers with elegant simplicity. Yes, Pete thinks, like him. He will never — _ever_ — end up like him. “You were the one doing the fucking Tony Montana impersonation last night, that was all on you, you fucking self-righteous _prick_.”

Patrick is awfully eloquent for someone sporting a bloody nose induced by narcotic abuse.

Pete shakes his head. “I thought you were _dead_. This morning, when I woke up, you’re — you’re fucking _bleeding_ and I thought you — I thought you’d OD’d.”

Pete is not going to live enough days, weeks, years to forget that moment. He’s haunted now, forever spectred by the revenant of the possibility of Patrick’s death. The fact is — the God’s honest truth — it’s only a matter of time before it happens for real. Patrick is a thermite explosion in action, burning through oxygen so brilliantly bright and beautiful. He’ll burn out, and soon, dead and cold and buried no doubt long before he greets his thirtieth birthday.

Pete finds his sneakers and shoves them on, doesn’t bother with the laces.

“I can’t do this,” he mutters; he means he can’t watch Patrick commit suicide by self-indulgence. He can’t be there when VH1, MTV and Fuse spend a day playing his music videos and the gossip rags tear his world apart with speculation.

“ _Right_.” Patrick immediately makes it his business to misunderstand. “I’m good enough to suck your dick but you don’t want anything but the fun part. You don’t even want the fucking fun part unless it’s on your terms. You know what? _I’m_ done. Get the fuck out of my house and don’t let the fucking gates hit you in the ass on the way out. You remember how to open them now? Right, _Chad_?”

Pete hesitates in the arch of the door, but only for a moment. His bag cuts bruises into his shoulder as he swings it up, feels the weight of it catch him in the small of the back like a final farewell. Patrick’s eyes are red, damp. It could be the hangover but that doesn’t explain the way his lower lip trembles. Pete’s never made him cry before.

“I’m sorry,” he says, because deep down, he can’t shake the feeling that this is his fault. “I’m sorry I can’t be what you need. Get help, _real_ help, before—” _you wind up dead_ , is what he wants to say, but can’t because saying it out loud feels like a premonition, “—before you go too far.”

Patrick doesn’t say a word but won’t look away. Pete turns, walks down the stairs and slips through the front door. He doesn’t, won’t, cry in the musty heat of the ancient Wrangler. He holds it together entirely, though his seams strain with the effort, until he reaches a door he hasn’t stood in front of in months.

“Pete?”

Gabe ruffles his post-party hair, his Glendale suburban nightmare of a home looming cozy over his shoulder. There are toys on the hallway floor, abandoned by one of the many kids Pete can never keep track of. One of those ride-in cars with a creepy as fuck smiley face is abandoned in the yard. If he’s shocked to see Pete, he’s doing a great job of hiding it.

Pete snaps, breaks and falls onto his chest. “I fucked up. I don’t deserve you, you should slam that door right in my face but — I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Ah, pobrecito.” Gabe takes him inside like he never left. “Come on in, big guy, we got waffles.”

*

If anyone asks — which, for the record, they _don’t_ — Patrick is doing just fine.

He’s absolutely A-Okay, hunky dory, completely peachy. He’s all of those things, and a dozen more euphemisms, until he’s alone. Alone is when he cries. Alone is when he indulges in any and all pharmaceuticals available to buy him another hour or two of numbness. Alone is when he trawls his Google alerts for any mention of Pete’s name, for the irrefutable evidence that Pete is falling apart without him. That evidence is sadly not forthcoming; Pete is doing great.

Not to sound like Sinead O’Connor or anything, he’s not tracking minutes, hours, or days since Pete went away. He’s not. But he’s acutely aware of the absence, a shadow scorched into the depths of him, shaped like Pete and throbbing sore. It’s the extraction site of a rotten tooth; raised red and raw and begging for the painful prod of fingers or tongue. Patrick will not stop picking at it.

It’s taken a few weeks — longer, he’s almost certain it’s March now — but he thinks he’s almost found the will to delete Pete’s number. He can’t delete the photographs of them together, though. Not yet. The selfie taken in a hotel in London is the only thing that stops him throwing himself from something high.

He’s in another faceless city tonight, somewhere from sea to shining sea. They blur together, a card shoved into his hand, just to make sure he doesn’t greet the wrong place, as he pops a pre-show bump backstage.

In between albums and awards shows, this stopped being fun.

Right now, though, _right now_ Patrick thinks he’s found the elixir of euphoria. The perfect balance of coke and uppers popped openly in a bar somewhere in this; the home of the Vikings or the Lions or the Raiders. Specifics no longer matter now there’s no one to call and ask where he is tonight. Patrick is flying, tripping on weightless feet as he heads for the bar and forgets the things he needed to forget.

Life is good; Patrick is talented, he’s young, he’s wealthy. There’s literally no reason he shouldn’t smile, so he does. He smiles so hard and so wide his face aches, his lips sore at the corners. He smiles vacantly until he realizes someone is smiling back.

“Brendon,” the stranger says, which means Patrick has presumably asked for his name. Funny — _hilarious_ — he doesn’t remember asking.

God, this shit is good.

Brendon is cute; dark hair, dark eyes, nice smile. Patrick feels like that’s a combination he’s into. He can’t remember why, so instead he says, “Patrick!”

Brendon laughs like Patrick’s the funniest dude in the room. It feels a little like being a balloon, the string pulled taut, taut, tauter and then it gives, it snaps and Patrick drifts. He wants freedom but lacks the direction to know what to do with it. So, in lieu of alternate ideas, he allows Brendon to kiss him.

He tastes of cigarettes and an unfamiliar brand of gum; sharp and pepperminty. Patrick is vaguely aware of a hollow ache around the place his heart used to be when he thinks of tasting cinnamon. Brendon is soft, though. Warm. Patrick pulls him into a cab and takes him back to the hotel.

*

_It’s not the same_ , he thinks, right around the point that Brendon fucks him from behind, bent over a hotel pillow that smells of generic fabric softener and his own hair product, the tang of lube sharp on his fingertips. It’s the wrong hands, wrong cock, wrong Patrick. It’s the comedown hitting way too early and burning him up with everything he doesn’t want to confront.

That’s the only reason he cries instead of getting off.

*

When Patrick wakes, it’s not quite morning. It’s gloomy-dark, shadows pooling in terrifying formations in each corner of the room. His head hurts. His back, too, throbbing down into his ass. Patrick lies very still on the far edge of the mattress and tries to mold the shape of Brendon’s features into something that looks a little more like Pete.

Daylight takes a lifetime to break, sunlight streaking golden across fuck-trashed hotel sheets. Brendon sleeps on his back with his mouth open, arms spread. His cock is half-hard and pitched warm beneath the sheets; Patrick is debating the wisdom of slipping under them and sucking him down.

It’s not that he feels particularly inclined to give a paranoid, anxious blowjob. He’s just desperate with hope that it might soothe the side-effects of the comedown.

When Brendon finally stirs, Patrick inches closer, plays his hands along the slim, hard lines of his chest, abs, sides and moves to rest his head against the available stretch of shoulder. He’s not sure why he does this but thinks, perhaps, it’s that he craves intimacy. Brendon goes entirely rigid. His eyes bug open and he stares at Patrick with the bone-deep revulsion reserved for regrettable one-night stands.

“What are you doing?” he asks Patrick, shifting away.

Patrick blinks and, because he doesn’t understand rejection when it’s spelled out for him, he replies, “I — can’t we cuddle for a minute?”

“Dude,” Brendon is halfway into his pants already and looking for his shoes. Naked and vulnerable, Patrick curls under the sheets. “You were — I can’t even say a good lay. Who the fuck _cries_? I only stayed because a cab would’ve been too expensive.”

Patrick blinks. “Oh.”

“Like, good for you if that’s what you’re into, man. But I gotta go. I — I don’t even have an excuse. I just don’t want to be here.”

While Brendon gallops from the room like hellfire is licking at his heels, Patrick crawls to the bathroom. He spends a long time on the floor of the shower watching water swirl away down the drain. He imagines he can follow it.

He realizes this: his life is measured in lines of blow, in neat bags of pastel pills to haul him up or drag him down. Those things are limited and entirely finite. They drift, sand in an hourglass, to the inevitable conclusion of his untimely demise.

The terrifying thing is, once the radio stations and music channels have finished broadcasting their memorials, once the press has run the story for all it’s worth, no one will mourn him. No one features in his life aside from Andy, Travie and an unending trail of one-night stands. Patrick will die and ‘Patrick Stump: Recording Artist’ will end and the world will keep right on turning, the water closing over his head without a ripple.

He’s haunted, hunted scared, by the last words Pete said to him.

Wet from the shower and shivering, he curls on soaked hotel sheets. He finds his phone and, fingers trembling, dials the number he knows by wrote. It rings, endless. He’s braced for the click of the voicemail when a voice that makes his chest heave with fresh sobs trips onto the line.

“Patrick?”

“Mom?” he gasps, breath stuttering desperately with the will to hold it together. The dam gives. Patrick is five years old again, stinging sore with a skinned knee. “I — mommy? I — oh God. I think — I think I really need some help.”

*

Patrick is ready for death.

This isn’t an exaggeration, some hyperbolic desperation designed to garner sympathy from nurses with professional smiles. No. Patrick would rather die than live another torturous, gut-cramped second of this horrific, endless vortex of under-skin itching. His blood no longer exists, platelets and cells replaced with need, red and white cravings racing through his veins and into the endless despair where his heart once hung. Each chamber of it pulses throbbing tingles of panic and thick, cold sweat. Patrick is the center of an implosion folding in and in on himself until he’s sure there’ll be nothing left.

It’s been a week since his mom arrived at his hotel suite, since she stroked matted hair back from his brow and told him everything would be fine. A week since, shivering and still naked, he let her call Andy and didn’t listen in on the conversation.

If that was a week ago, then it must be six days since she delivered him here; this cursed place of whimpering addicts curled in on themselves as the world winds on without them. This isn’t Passages with pristine white robes and door-to-door dealers delivering powdered relief in carefully measured doses. There are no widescreen plasma televisions, not hot and cold running fiber optic broadband or daily check-ins with the staff at Island. This is real. This is _hell_.

Patrick has vomited until he’s sure there’s nothing left in the bitter-sharp cramp of his guts. There’s not even bile, nothing but hard, dry retching that makes his stomach hurt and his head spin with starlight. He slumps, defeated, against the toilet and rests his head against the cool stretch of plain white porcelain.

He hasn’t slept in three or four days. It blurs into one long stretch of time spent laid on the bed in the rehab center. He’s too lethargic to move, too wired to sleep, caught in an unending cycle of buzz-bright need and aching self-loathing.

There’s no way he can do this. He’s not a prisoner, not detained for his own safety, he’s here of his own volition, hell, he’s _paying_ for this fucking shit. A king’s ransom to be transferred each week from his Bank of America account to some snake oil psychiatrist who has the audacity to tell Patrick he has a problem. Right now, Patrick’s only _problem_ is how to obtain enough marching powder to dull the ache in his ribs, his spine, the fucked-raw base of his throbbing skull.

Lies, damned lies, or so someone said. This isn’t recovery, it’s little more than purgatory, some liminal waiting room caught between dying and death. Patrick is almost certainly shuffling towards the latter, convinced that if he can just have a taste of that bittersweet, tingling-rush relief, _one more hit_ , then everything will be okay.

“How’re you feeling?” asks a nurse, brandishing a tray of pills he’s supposed to take. There are things to deal with the nausea, with the headaches, with the sharpened edge of the comedown stabbing directly between his eyes. Not the one thing he actually _needs_.

Patrick snorts. “Go fuck yourself.”

She smiles; small, bland, professional and Patrick’s temper flares. He’s Patrick goddamn _Stump_ , he _means_ something, dammit. He’s not some middle-aged, middle-management, Midwestern _nobody_ dealing with a crack addiction borne from suburban boredom. He’s a _star_ , he deserves some respect, some fucking _recognition_.

His ego unfurls, bitter, black and desperately ugly.

“Don’t you know who I am?” he snaps, knocking back pharmaceuticals like Tylenol can provide a reasonable substitution for uppers.

She nods. “Yes, Mister Stumph,” and she pronounces the _‘h’_ like she knows it infuriates him, “you’re a patient here at Gateway, you’re here to deal with your addiction.”

“Stump! _Stump_! It’s fucking _Stump_! Like a fucking _tree_ , how hard can it be, goddammit? I’m _famous_! I’m a — a big deal, I fucking _matter_ , okay?” She doesn’t react, barely blinks, he switches from God complex to pathetic wheedling. “I just – I just need something to take the edge off. Just, like, half a hit, nothing stupid, just a little, you know? Can’t you…?”

There’s something perilously close to pity in her eyes as she watches him down his pain relief. “Try to get some sleep. Your mom is coming in later.”

“I can’t do this,” he informs the bitter smell of his own stomach acid, splashed against the bowl, “This is fucking

_“Not happening,” Pete Wentz said on the red-carpet last night. “I get that people are excited to see what’s going on with Iron Man but, like, their legal department scares me. You’ll just have to wait and see.”_

_Wentz was alone at last night’s premiere of Sleeping with Giants following his recent split from_

“Patrick? Patrick Stumph?”

His head snaps up from the listless nod of chin to chest. He blinks, floating somewhere on the edges of the room with its scuffed tile floor and ring of uncomfortable plastic chairs. It smells of antiseptic and despair. It reminds him of Fight Club, of sobbing men forced to confront inner demons only there’s no Edward Norton and Patrick’s pretty sure he’s not living a double life as Tyler Durden. 

The silence ticks on. Patrick realizes he’s probably supposed to say something, to provide an answer to a question he wasn’t listening to. He offers this: “This whole place is fucking bullshit.”

The therapist taps the cap of his pen against straight, even teeth. Expensive dentistry funded by the revolving door rotation of people like Patrick willing to hand over the contents of their checking account in exchange for another shot at life. He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, considers the notes laid out in front of him and speaks in that imperious tone that says he’s better than Patrick.

“Do you think that attitude is going to help your recovery?” Patrick always assumed ‘therapist’ was not synonymous with ‘asshole’ and yet this guy, this _fucking_ guy, seems hell-bent on proving him wrong.

“I’m not here to fucking _recover_ ,” Patrick waves his hand dismissively and wonders if it’s possible to lobotomize himself with the chair leg before someone restrains him, “I’m not some doped up, drugged-out _loser_ huffing glue in a Denny’s parking lot. I need a little help kicking the coke and then I can go home.”

“Home?” Doctor goddamn No Name, with his no-doubt recently purchased degree hanging on the wall like he’s proud that this was the best he could do with his medical career, draws the word out. Patrick cracks each knuckle on his left hand, then gets to work on the right. “How, exactly, do you see that playing out?”

Patrick wants to laugh, in fact he does let out a soft little snort around a smirk that feels brittle at the corners. “I’m going to head back to Los Angeles and sort shit out with my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Whatever.”

Because that’s what this is about, isn’t it? If he can get clean and get out then Pete will have to understand that Patrick made some mistakes but that he’s learned from them. He’s developed and grown and all of that psychotherapy bullshit and now he’s ready for Pete to love him all over again.

He misses him, a phantom limb itching day and night, crawling through his veins and replacing pseudo-feel good in the form of chemically enhanced dopamine and serotonin with this endless chasm of _nothing_. It claws the back of his throat bloodied, makes his fingers itch to write songs he doesn’t have the creativity to craft right now. Patrick is slowly suffocating and no one seems to get it.

The quote-unquote _doctor_ , raises his eyebrows. “Do you really think you’re on your way to recovery?”

Patrick applies no hesitation to losing his shit entirely, his chair sailing over the heads of the addicts that aren’t like him and crashing into the wall. “Does that explain what I _think_? Go fuck

_“Yourself, you know? That’s the only person you’re accountable to,” Wentz says from behind a wardrobe rack of Gucci, Versace and thrift store band shirts. “Like, it’s not me trying to be one thing for one set of people and something else for the rest. It took me a long time to grow into my skin and to figure out that I don’t have to follow a certain formula. It’s totally rad that I get to express myself like this.”_

_He spends a little longer debating the pros and cons of combining high-end fashion with things he picks up for a couple of bucks on eBay. It’s clear that Pete, whilst a deeply focused man, has something more pressing on his mind. We take a break together, drinking mineral water while Pete considers the fresh papaya brought to him from catering._

_“It’s weird. I always thought I’d have settled down by now, even without the career. It feels like there are plates I’m trying to spin and I can’t keep all of them turning, you know?” I ask him if he’s talking about recent ex-boyfriend, multi-platinum selling solo artist Patrick Stump. Pete becomes quiet. “Yeah. I suppose so. But I guess these things don’t always work out. He’ll always be a really good_

“Friend?” says Patrick. His voice is brittle bones and dull edges, his skin wax and ash under his fingers as he grinds the pad of his thumb into his eye socket. “I — I don’t _have_ any friends.”

The nurse gusts out a breath that puffs her cheeks. She reminds him of his mom; kind, gentle, fond of Crocs. “He says his name is Andy.”

Patrick’s brow furrows as he maps the way his veins web under the tender skin of his wrist. There are half-formed sentences hissing acid at the back of his tongue, the echo of a Patrick who threw champagne bottles and demanded dealers in his dressing room. He lets it go with a sigh. “ _Hurley_? Andy _Hurley_?”

She nods and asks if he wants to see him. Patrick shrugs because, really, it would be kind of cool to know if he even has a record deal any more. He bailed mid-tour. At this point he’ll consider himself blessed if Island don’t sue him for every cent he has and take his house for good measure.

Andy arrives in a clatter of expensive shoes and sunglasses. Patrick’s heart attempts to turn his lungs to blood-red pulp. He seriously thinks about throwing up into the water jug. Andy leans against the doorframe and considers the reproduction Monet on the wall. Patrick’s spent a lot of time staring at it, too. There’s a tiny imperfection between two water lilies that drives him demented some nights.

They don’t say a word until Andy breathes deep. Patrick’s world staggers to a halt, lurching sticky on its axis as he waits for instruction to get himself a legal brief. Instead, Andy says this: “I am _so_ fucking _sorry_.”

His cheek meets Andy’s chest before he’s made the decision to move, crushed and sobbing against slick-sharp designer tailoring. And Andy, he rocks him like a child, strokes his hair and rakes his fingers along the inch of coppery roots that bleed into the faded-yellow artificial brightness of a bleach job he hates but lacks the skill, time or product to deal with.

“Your hair looks like shit,” Andy observes when Patrick has calmed, when they pull apart and stare awkwardly at their hands until Patrick fumbles to pour them each a glass of tepid water. “ _You_ look like shit. Are they taking care of you? I can get you out of this shit hole, man, get you into Wonderland, just say the word.”

Patrick shakes his head, hard and fast, he wants to tip the world like a Magic 8 ball. He wants to watch the letters slick and shine, to tilt in just the right way until it gives him the answer he wants. He laces his fingers together one way then the other, worries his lip and, finally, he speaks. “So, uh, the label…?”

“ _Fuck_ the fucking label,” Andy’s fist meets his knee and Patrick flinches, replacing the empty burn of stomach acid with a deep swig of water. His guts cramp, threaten to immediately bring it back up. “ _You’re_ what matters. I — they didn’t drop you. They put some PR spin on the whole thing about taking some time out to work on different projects. I — I’m sorry I didn’t look out for you. That was shitty of me.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Patrick insists. “I was — I’m the one who should apologize. I’m sorry, dude.”

It’s clear that Andy is trying his best to smile, lips curled up as he nods to the Monet. “This place really is awful. I could find you some place nicer.”

Patrick is single track and bloody minded as he bites a bruise into his lower lip and mutters, “I don’t care about any of that. Tell me about

_PETE WENTZ ‘BLOWN AWAY’ BY HIS FIRST EMMY_

_Congratulations, Pete! On Monday night, Pete Wentz won the Emmy Award 2012 for Supporting Actor in a Limited Series._

_“Seriously, what the hell?” the actor, who won for his role as Donnie on HBO’s What a Catch, remarked at the beginning of his speech._

_“This has been like a beautiful dream for me,” he went on. “I can’t wait to show this to my mom!”_

_It’s noted that Pete was alone on the red carpet once again, denying rumors linking him to co-star Hayley Williams and confirming that they’re_

“Just good friends.” Patrick tosses the copy of National Enquirer down onto the coffee table without reading the rest of it. His mom raises her eyebrows. “That’s what everyone says right before the engagement photo shoot gets splashed all over the press. It’s over, ma. He’s — he’s not coming back.”

There will never be a Pete and Patrick, not in the definitive sense. The whispered promises exchanged like vows on sweat-soaked sheets are broken. The house that Patrick had begun to think of as theirs won’t know the way Pete’s voice shapes against its walls ever again. Patrick is a hollow husk, aching. He’s the empty echo of a condemned building as he leans into the warmth of his mom’s sweater. It smells of being small, of childhood vulnerability and the parental superpower to make everything okay executed with birthday gifts and trips to the park.

She rests a hand gently against his knee. “Honey… Maybe that’s for the best.”

Patrick has no idea how that can possibly true when his heart, his lungs, the very marrow of his bones, _aches_ for the brush of Pete’s hand. He blinks back the tears and swears he’ll hold it in until she leaves. Then, he’ll pour his loneliness into his notebook and a pillow that will never smell of Pete.

Patrick’s not sure he can do

_“This,” said Wentz, speaking for the first time since his role in the next instalment of the Star Wars franchise was announced. “This is everything I’ve been working towards. I can’t put into words how happy I am to confirm my role as Brynn in the upcoming Star Wars movie.”_

*

Seasons change but not in California, the sunlight catching in the brief breath of greenery bursting through Los Angeles. Pete’s wearing a hoodie over his shorts and running vest like it’s cold enough to warrant it when really, all he’s trying to do is summon some actual fucking _weather_ by the power of positive thinking.

The leash bites into his hip as his dog – half American bulldog, half Pitbull, full asshole – attempts to dislocate as many of Pete’s joints as he can in a fit of utter asshattery.

“Hemingway, heel!” It’s as ineffective as it sounds, Hemmy doubling his efforts and halving his listening skills as he tears ass towards the dog park. He’s a dog on a mission; chasing fantasies of tossed tennis balls and the opportunity to terrorize as many Pomeranians as possible. “Come on, man! Quit being a jerk!”

Hemmy doesn’t quit being a jerk. Pete isn’t sure he knows _how_ to quit being a jerk. He’s good company though, breaking up the empty silence of a house without a roommate. It’s taken Pete a while to adjust to that, to consider the possibility of replacing the empty bed and the ghost of Patrick past with something tangible. But like, what can he do? He never goes out socially unless it’s with Gabe or Joe and figures he’s probably not in a place where Tinder is a viable option.

It’s cool, though. Between Hemmy and the impending scheduled start date for Star Wars, he’s busy enough not to notice the cold pillow next to his own.

He’s been running this route with Hemmy for the past six months, a twelve mile loop out of Burbank, up into the Hills, past the Hollywood sign and back down into the valley. It stops Hemmy from using every pair of shoes he owns as chew toys and leaves Pete tired enough to sleep without the chemical assistance of a well-timed Xanax.

He slips Hemmy’s leash and tosses the ball. This part is okay, an hour around the park, toss and fetch, toss and fetch. Hemmy immediately proves that this part is _not_ okay as he ignores his own ball entirely and hauls ass across the grass to snatch at the ball bouncing high in front of another dog.

“Hemmy! Leave!” Pete bellows. Hemmy does the exact opposite, stealing the ball from under the nose of the other dog and taking off across the grass without looking back. “Hemingway! No! Drop it, asshole, fucking _drop it_!”

The other dog sits, head cocked and weight braced on a single front paw. It does this because it only has three legs. Pete immediately upgrades his dog from ‘casual thug’ to ‘active ableist’ and rehearses his apology accordingly. Hemmy refuses to go down without a fight, darting around the park with that grin that sort of reminds Pete of Gabe. When Pete eventually snags a hand into his collar, he swears that bastard _winks_ at him before spitting the ball, slick with bulldog drool, into his palm.

“You,” Pete informs him in a hiss, wiping spit onto the leg of his shorts, “are a _jerk_ and _this_ is why you’ve got no goddamn friends.” To the approaching owner, he says this: “I am _so_ sorry, my dog is an absolute _asshole_. Here, I – I cleaned it off as best I could but like, I’ll _totally_ get you another one if it’s ruined—”

“Pete?”

Patrick blinks at him from beneath the brim of a fedora and the tumble of rose gold bangs. Pete has lost the ability to breathe, to speak or to form rational sentences. He’s entirely blindsided, opening and closing his mouth in a way that’s no doubt deeply unattractive. In a city of thirteen million people, there’s no possible way that this can be happening for real.

He’s talked this through with his therapist so many times, the things he might say, the ways he would deal with this. Pete has roleplayed and rehearsed and written goddamn _letters_ that will never see a stamped, addressed envelope. He knows this conversation better than he knows every script he’s ever read through, he has lines and questions and fucking _declarations_ burning the tip of his tongue.

Instead of saying any of that, he says this: “Your dog has like, _noticeably_ fewer legs than he should have. My dog didn’t do that.”

“No,” Patrick laughs. It makes his nose wiggle, his blocky glasses shifting with the movement. The ground feels unstable. “That was cancer. And it’s she. Peggy.”

There’s a half-formed explosion where Pete’s heart used to be. A messy mix of unstable chemical compounds sparking and reacting. This is either the final stage of heartbreak or a cardiac arrest. He considers how adult it would be to ditch his dog and take off running in the opposite direction. God knows, he’s got the expensive sneakers for it.

Patrick is unrecognizable, plucking absently at the too-long sleeves of his gray cardigan as he shuffles from foot to foot, punk rock boots scuffing against the grass. He’s gained weight, but not a lot. Enough to bring the softness back to his cheeks, the evidence of the pillow of it just above his waistline. It makes his shoulders look broader. The silence has ticked from natural to awkward, Patrick presses the ball from one hand to the other.

“Cute dog,” he offers, voice low and eyes lower. He stoops to ruffle Hemmy’s ears. His cheeks, his nose, the tips of his ears are all turning a violent color chart of unnatural shades of pink.

“Hemingway. He’s a total dick,” Pete says without hesitation but warm with affection, thumbing a treat from the running belt around his waist and tossing it into Hemmy’s leering grin. He gestures at Peggy, prim and ladylike and sat at her master’s heel. “Can she…?”

“Sure,” Patrick nods. Peggy catches the treat in mid-air and Patrick steals every modicum of air from Pete’s lungs as he continues. “It’s good to see you.”

“And you,” Pete agrees with heartfelt sincerity. His mouth continues entirely unbidden, riding roughshod over any possible intervention suggested by his brain. “You’re good. Look good. You look good.” Pete considers tossing himself into the lake and have done with it. “I’m sorry, I’m just having – a little trouble processing everything right now.”

Patrick grins a crooked little grin. “You got therapy, too, huh? Uh – sorry about that. Guess that’s my fault.”

That is patently untrue. Pete shakes his head and gestures weakly towards a nearby bench. “Can we – could we sit for a minute?”

They do, the dogs bounding playfully together, sniffing scents caught in one another’s fur, and chasing interesting squirrel trails around tree roots. Patrick presses his knees together carefully and folds his hands over his lap. Pete is caught in a cyclone, conflicting sensations clawing at his guts as he bites desperate nerves into the skin around his thumbnail. This is a man who knows every inch of him, from the tips of his toes to the roots of his hair and the god-fucked heart somewhere between the two.

“I heard about Star Wars,” Patrick murmurs into the awkward silence between them. Pete doesn’t want it to be awkward. He doesn’t know what he wants right now. “Congratulations! That’s – it’s fucking _amazing_. You deserve it.”

Pete will never get used to the emotion that tears through him every time he thinks of the role. The culmination of everything he’s ever worked towards, the promise that the debt, the embarrassment, the constant self-doubt has been worth it. He shrugs and smiles with one corner of his mouth. “It’s not bad, I guess. They’re telling me I have to bleach my hair.”

Frowning thoughtfully, Patrick asks, “What kind of asshole bleaches their hair? Seriously.”

“I know, right?” Pete rolls his eyes, all theater. “I – I heard the new single. 27, right? So good, man.”

“I’m being a snob,” Patrick laughs, tossing off his fedora and ruffling a hand through his bangs. His cardigan sleeves slip down over his fingers. Pete thinks it may be the most disarmingly charming thing he’s ever seen. “Who writes a fucking _concept album_ in 2013? Like I’m Roger fucking Daltrey. It’s – it’s fun, though. I’m having fun.”

While Pete doesn’t want to hear the banal and the dull, the monotonous day to day things he could fathom from the latest issue of Rolling Stone, he does want to hear Patrick’s voice. There’s a new quality to it, a roundness, a depth, something that pulses prickling static down into his fingertips as he nods and encourages more words to trickle down his spine like warm, stuttering shower spray.

“… so, that’s why you never work with Jay Z and expect to come out with working vocal cords,” he pauses for breath, flushed pink as he watches Peggy and Hemmy with more interest than is strictly necessary. “But,” he pauses and slides a glance at Pete from the corner of his eye, barely visible around the thick, dark frames of his glasses, “I’m not sure _this_ is what we should talk about.”

Pete has been enraptured by the way Patrick’s mouth moves, shocked into stupefied, blinking silence when his lips press together. He scrambles for something to say. In the endless quiet, the truth seems like a good enough start. “You broke my fucking heart, man.”

Patrick winces, flinches back from him for a moment and Pete suspects he ought to say something else before he loses the opportunity all together. “No, listen, like – it doesn’t matter. Wait, it _does_ matter, but I get it now.”

“I’m not sure you do,” Patrick spreads his hands and examines them, “but I want to apologize. For everything. I put you through the worst kind of shit, you absolutely didn’t deserve it, and I – I took you for granted. I thought you’d stay even though I knew you shouldn’t. And – and what happened at the party? That was – I’m so, so sorry.”

Any careful response deserts Pete entirely and he stares at the floor, sick and hollow in his chest and stomach, gutted entirely. He shrugs, entirely helpless and ducks down into the protective cowl of his hood. “It happened. At least you were right about the media ban and, like, it’s not like I’m gonna have to look Lady Gaga in the eye ever again.”

“She wore a meat dress. I’m not sure she’s in a position to judge anybody.”

Pete snorts at that, dorkish and ugly. He’ll take any distraction presented to him that diverts attention away from the thick, aching push of tears at the back of his throat.

“You got a dog,” he observes, entirely pointlessly. “She’s sweet, if a little low on legs.”

“Yeah,” Patrick’s smile is faint, chasing sunlight across the crests of his cheeks, “my therapist said a dog might help. Give me a reason to get up on the shitty days, you know? No one wanted her because, well, the leg and the whole cancer thing. We make a good team, she likes hanging out at the studio. I — I got her a bed under the mix desk, apparently, she sighs every time I hit a shitty note. You had the same idea?”

Hemmy is attempting to befriend a rottweiler. Pete suspects he ought to intervene before it gets amorous. “I was lonely,” he shrugs, the reality of it twisting cold through his chest. “I _am_ lonely. He helps.”

Silence steals between them, everything else caught sticky on his admission that things haven’t been the same since he walked away. It was for the best, absolutely, he knows that. He _knows_ that. And yet.

“I’m glad you got clean,” he says finally, then realizes that he doesn’t actually _know_ if that’s the case. “Uh – I mean, did you?”

Patrick is almost smiling as he reaches into his hip pocket and pulls out a slim leather wallet. He fumbles inside for a moment then extracts something coppery and round, engraved simply. A Narcotics Anonymous sobriety coin. “For a year now.”

Pete is hugging him before he really thinks about it, crushing him close to his chest for a handful of heartbeats. But Pete is sweating, sour, nervous sweat he’ll blame on the run and his optimistic choice of outerwear, so he pulls back before Patrick complains. Patrick doesn’t look as though he was thinking about complaining.

“I’m so proud of you.”

It’s a weird thing to say to someone he used to know. He means it, though. It’s immensely relieving to know the twisted specter of a tragically early death is that much further from reality.

“I miss you,” Patrick mutters into the crackle and hum of air between them. It hits Pete square in the gut, knocking the wind from him entirely. “You – I really think you were basically the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

It would be possible, theoretically, for Pete to haul him close once more. That thought alone is enough to ease the tightness of his lungs. “I miss you, too.”

They fall into easy silence, watching the way the dogs chase shadows across the grass. It smells of springtime in Los Angeles, of gasoline and fleeting vegetation caught in the eye of the storm before the summer sucks the life from everything.

“I was wondering,” Patrick says, the timbre of his voice chasing shockwaves of familiarity along the length of Pete’s spine. His nervous system feels entirely unraveled, laid out on display for the trace of Patrick’s fingertips. Is it possible to vibrate out of frequency with everything around him? “I know it’s dumb but… do you think maybe we could, like, I don’t know. Could we pick up where we left off?”

God, but he’s brave, Pete envies him that and grants himself a moment to imagine this scenario; Hollywood hot once more, the two of them against the world. Black town cars and black suits, beautiful boys being bad both together and for one another. Award show highs and comedown lows, the impossibility of love teetering too fast around the corners. Patrick bright and golden against white sheets on large beds.

He shakes his head.

“I can’t pick it back up,” he says softly, fingers curling around the edge of the bench. “It was too toxic, too fucking dangerous. We were like pyrotechnics after sunset – so beautiful but completely fucking out of control. I can’t go back to that.”

It hurts, the way Patrick’s face slips from hope to sadness to resigned understanding. He doesn’t linger, pushing to his feet and calling Peggy with a whistle. Somewhere between hugging and heartbreak, he’s lost his hat entirely but doesn’t seem to notice.

“Right, yeah. I— of course,” his voice is brisk, filled with forced cheerfulness like he’ll break down if he pauses for a second, “Well, it’s been good to see you! Good luck with filming. I – I’ll go see it, when it’s released, you know?”

He’s halfway across the park before Pete’s brain has caught up with the rest of him, Hemmy trotting at Peggy’s heels and a crushed, dusty fedora on the floor at his feet. Pete is up in a moment, not thinking, only reacting as he sprints along the sidewalk until he can grab at Patrick’s sleeve.

“Patrick, wait!”

They stumble, Patrick turning too sharply and Pete stopping too swiftly, slamming into one another for a moment as they mumble apologies and untangle limbs from leashes and slick, wet doggy kisses. Patrick raises his eyebrows, eyes rimmed red and wet behind the lenses of his glasses. He seems like he’s already careering towards the inevitable breakdown. Pete gets it.

“I – we can’t pick it back up,” he insists. Patrick is halfway through an irritated ‘I _heard_ you,’ as Pete barrels on. “We can’t. But – but maybe we could… start over?”

There’s something perilously close to a smile tugging at the corners of Patrick’s lips, his eyes shaded hopeful as he blinks behind his glasses and waits for Pete to continue. Like a dork, Pete shoves out his hand for Patrick to shake then realizes he’s still holding the fedora.

“I’m, uh, I’m Pete and like, I found your hat?” Patrick’s smile is defined now, carved across his lips as he takes the hat and carefully sets it on the back of his head. “I was wondering if maybe we could, you know, go for a drink some time?”

“I’m Patrick,” Patrick grins brighter than premier night spotlights, glowing in sunlight as he gestures vaguely beyond the park. “I don’t drink but, like, coffee might be nice. There’s a place right by the park that does this fennel tea latte thing, if you want to check it out.”

“What the fuck,” questions Pete, eyebrows raised, “is a fennel tea latte?”

“It’s a fucking latte with a shot of fennel tea mixed in,” Patrick rolls his eyes like he finds Los Angeles as ridiculous as Pete does. “It’s basically the gayest, most LA thing you’ll find this side of West Hollywood, _especially_ if you get it extra hot with soy. But then, I do yoga, so I consider myself an expert on being gay in Los Angeles.”

Pete grins, dirty, pinched tight into his cheeks until they ache as he clips on Hemmy’s leash and lets Patrick lead the way. “Yoga, huh? Doesn’t that really help—”

“Flexibility?” Patrick’s smirk is filthy, dark-light contrast with the shy way he allows the back of their knuckles to brush as their hands swing at their sides. “Yeah, it’s definitely _great_ for that. Maybe I could give you a lesson some time? Show you my downward dog?”

Pete seizes his hand, laces their fingers and squeezes like he’ll never let go. Their future is unwritten, their past entirely behind them. Pete intends to focus only on the present with this man. This wonderful, maddening, beautiful man, with his idiosyncrasies and quirks and deep, yawning dark side fought and conquered.

“I’d like that,” says Pete. “What are you doing tonight? Or tomorrow? Or Saturday?”

“Let me check my diary,” Patrick doesn’t check anything at all, simply pauses, turns and wraps a hand around the back of Pete’s neck. Pete considers the possibility of Newton being entirely wrong about the theory of gravity and floating away into endless blue. “Yep, turns out I’m pretty much totally free for the next six or so decades.”

Heart throbbing interesting, offbeat bass lines against his ribs, Pete takes the soft warmth of Patrick’s face between his hands and slides his thumb along the flush of his lower lip. He can taste Patrick’s breath against his mouth, enraptured by the hand digging into his hip. Pete is tingling, bruised fruit sticky and melting in spring sunlight as he pauses before their mouths touch.

“You know I’m still totally into you, right?” he asks, breathing air heated warm from Patrick’s lungs.

“I know; I’m kind of half-stupid for you, too,” Patrick nods, impossible, glorious heat coursing sharp through Pete’s veins. “Turns out, it’s not a side effect of the cocaine.”

Pete smiles.

“Well then. I’m thinking it must be love.”

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/168268289@N03/46062139531/in/dateposted-public/)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic received nine months of my time, effort and love. If you've made if through all fifty-five thousand words of it, I thank you for devoting that time to my writing. It would be unbelievably amazing to know what you think in the form of comments of kudos.
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers.
> 
> See you next time.


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